Especially in panic mode.
The following post first appeared on Factcheck.org
In the wake of the mass shooting at an Oregon community college, Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates claimed that the school was a “gun-free zone.” That’s not exactly accurate.
Umpqua Community College does have policies prohibiting guns on campus, but they “would not apply to those with valid concealed weapon permits pursuant to Oregon law,” a college official told us.
The Oct. 1 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead, including the shooter. Trump, the Republican party’s leading candidate for president, was one of several GOP candidates who criticized the school’s policies on guns. He did so, for example, during an interview on “Fox and Friends Weekend” ( at the 2:25-minute mark).
Trump, Oct. 4: You know that was a gun-free zone in Oregon where they had no guns allowed, no nothing. So the only one that had the gun was the bad guy, and everybody was sitting there and there was nothing they could do. Not a thing they could do.
Mike Huckabee also used the “sitting duck” analogy in a tweet posted to his Twitter account a day after the shooting with the hashtag #UCCshooting. Carly Fiorina at an Oct. 2 press conference said about UCC: “This campus was a gun-free zone.”
The confusion is understandable. The school has two policies that prohibit weapons on campus under certain conditions.
The school’s student conduct policy states that students cannot carry a weapon “without written authorization.”
“Possession or use, without written authorization, of firearms, explosives, dangerous chemicals, substances, or any other weapons or destructive devices that are designed to or readily capable of causing physical injury, on College premises, at College-sponsored or supervised functions or at functions sponsored or participated in by the College” is prohibited, the student conduct policy states.
There is also a general prohibition on bringing weapons on campus “except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations.”
“Possession, use, or threatened use of firearms (including but not limited to BB guns, air guns, water pistols, and paint guns) ammunition, explosives, dangerous chemicals, or any other objects as weapons on college property, except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations, is prohibited,” the school says on a web page labeled “safety & security info.”
The state, however, has a 1989 concealed weapon law that conflicts with such gun bans. State law expressly states (in section 166.170) that the authority to regulate the possession of guns or “or any element relating to firearms” is “vested solely in the Legislative Assembly.”
