Jay Tea at Wizbang coined the phrase I used in the title, “hunting preserves for psychos,” after examining what it would truly take to make a gun-free zone a safe place to be.

First up, they need to absolutely control access to campus. They need to build hefty walls, with security features to keep people from going over, under, or through them. Then they need to put serious security measures on the few entrances through those walls. Metal detectors, hefty locks, repeated identity verification, and the like. No one gets in without going through multiple layers of screenings.

In essence, you take the model we all know and love from airport security and/or prisons and apply it to places like shopping malls or college campuses. The idea behind gun-free zones is to make it a safer place. Well, without controlling access of gun-carrying malcontents, how can that truly be? The short in the logic, like in all gun-control laws, is that all people, law abiding or otherwise, will respect the law. Funny how lawbreakers seem to miss that detail every time.

So let’s take the idea of a college, for example, designating itself (or the state legislature designating it) as a gun-free zone. No guns allowed; only the cops have guns. That’s the law students, faculty, staff and campus visitors agree to when stepping onto campus. The burgeoning argument in the Blogosphere is that these groups of people are forfeiting the individual right to “keep and bear arms” in return for the collective’s protection. If I give up my right to self-protection via my firearm, and set foot in the gun-free zone, then there is an expected level of protection afforded me by the college. The institution assumes the duties of protecting me and my family that I would have otherwise been able to provide.

Sounds like a legal briar patch I wouldn’t want to see anyone fall into. In my layman’s eyes, it’s as sound an argument as anything else. You tell me I can’t protect myself as I am able to do so anywhere else, I either a) refuse to step onto your grounds (something a state institution really can’t say) or b) allow me the individual right of self-protection I enjoy near anywhere else.