LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - The University of Kansas’ chancellor knows firing a gun on campus areas with pressurized gas cylinders, rocket fuel and other combustibles might be disastrous, though she frets the school still can’t ban firearms in such places.
In Kansas, where gun owners can carry concealed without a license or training, public universities as of July 2017 must allow anyone 21 or older to have concealed firearms on campus in buildings that don’t have security measures, including metal detectors - an option widely considered cost-prohibitive for the majority of campus buildings.
The governing Kansas Board of Regents has directed the universities to develop more detailed policies by October for the safe storage and handling of guns on campus, and to determine which buildings will see beefed-up security.
Bernadette Gray-Little, the University of Kansas’ chancellor, told the University Senate on Thursday there are high-security labs and other campus areas where shooting a gun would be dangerous, the Lawrence Journal-World (https://bit.ly/2dSWx78 ) reported. But she says the state’s attorney general has told the school it can’t make those places exceptions to state law.
The exception to the concealed-carry provision is buildings with adequate security measures to bar all guns, such as metal detectors or security guards.
At Kansas, a small committee of representatives from the school’s Lawrence campus and its Kansas City medical center has been working on the university’s draft policy.
“In making the policy there were some things that we tried to include that had to have a review by the attorney general,” Gray-Little said. When it came to designated restricted areas where guns would not be allowed, “we have not been given the go-ahead to include that.”
One of the committee members, aerospace engineering professor Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, told the chancellor Thursday that engineering labs are home to storage for a variety of dangers, including pressurized gas cylinders, rocket fuel and other fuels.
Gray-Little said the university’s policy legally could require people to have holstered any concealed gun brought into buildings.
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Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, https://www.ljworld.com
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