On the heels of his recent opinion holding that "self-defense" is "good and sufficient reason" to carry a gun to church, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli now says that state colleges like the University of Virginia cannot ban the carriage of concealed handguns by proper license holders. The opinion was written in response to a question by Senator Emmett Hanger (R-Mount Solon).
Cuccinelli reasoned that concealed handgun permit holders were explicilty entitled by law to carry concealed handguns throughout the Commonwealth except where prohibited "by law," and therefore state agencies like UVA could not ban concealed carry even in campus buildings and medical facilities by mere "policy. State universities could however go through the Commonwealth's formal rule making process and publish a regulation in the Virginia Administrative Code.
But even then a state college does not have carte blanche to ban gun carry on campus notes Cuccinnelli, citing to the Virginia supreme Court's recent action to uphold a published George Mason University regulation. In that case, a constitutional attack against a published regulation on Second Amendment grounds, the Court reasoned in part that GMU's regulation was not a total ban on gun carry, but rather a "tailored" regulation generally allowing both open and concealed carry on the open grounds of the GMU campus by students and visitors alike.
Interestingly, a violation of GMU's regulation carries no penalty - college officials would have to first order a person to leave the campus location where gun carry is banned by regulation, and only if she refused, would possible criminal tresspass liability arise. According to OpenCarry.org's campus carry map, most states are just like Virginia and do not generally prohibit by law gun carry on college campuses by visitors or students.
If UVA does decide to attempt to promulgate a regulation to ban gun carry at UVA, college officials will have to contend with opposition from gun rights groups like the Virginia Citizens Defense League during the notice and comment rule making process, as well as a possible political backlash in the legislature from lawmakers like Senator Hanger, and subsequent litigation against any published regulation.
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