Governor Nathan Bargain rejected a bill on Tuesday that would have immune eligible students in Georgia to acquit concealed weapons at public universities. In a lengthy veto statement, Deal said he institute "enlightening evidence" for his position in the views of pair of Founding Fathers who, nearly two centuries ago, opened a college where guns would not exist allowed.

In October of 1824, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison attended a board meeting of the University of Virginia, which would open the following spring. Jefferson and Madison had spent not a picayune fourth dimension thinking almost individual liberties. But minutes from the meeting show that their new school would not extend the right to comport arms to its reddish-brick grounds.

"No student shall, within the precincts of the University, introduce, go on or use any spirituous or vinous liquors, keep or utilize weapons or arms of whatsoever kind …" the board alleged. In his veto statement, Deal zeroed in on that passage, which can exist seen in the original document below:

Deal made a bold choice to root his choice in this historical context. He could accept justified his conclusion by referencing poll statistics (which in 2022 showed scant support for campus carry in Georgia) or list higher education officials' and academics' concerns nigh free speech and police enforcement'southward worries about student safety (all of which were abundantly voiced).

Instead, he invoked the very authority on which many gun rights enthusiasts rely: The Founding Fathers' words and intentions on the right to comport arms.

Many quotes about the relationship of private firearm ownership and freedom — often deployed online by gun rights proponents — have been misattributed to Jefferson, or misconstrued. Jefferson is widely credited with maxim, "The dazzler of the Second Amendment is that it will not exist needed until they try to accept information technology," but archivists at Monticello take found no evidence he made this statement. He is on record has having written, "Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks" in a letter of the alphabet to his nephew. But historian Saul Cornell thinks Jefferson was well-nigh probable contemplating slave rebellion, non the demand for self defense from criminals.

Staunch advocates for gun rights say that gun restrictions are a betrayal of the wishes of the Founders, and the authority they have drawn from the authors of the Constitution has served their movement profoundly. The Supreme Court opinion which affirmed the right to bear arms as an individual right, rather than one limited to militias, was an exercise in textual reading and historical investigation. Then when Deal — a Republican politician who is far from gun-shy — issued his veto of campus carry, he deployed a method of statement that should feel familiar to gun rights proponents.

"The blessing of these specific prohibitions relating to 'campus conduct' by the master author of the Declaration of Independence, and the principal writer of the The states Constitution," Deal wrote yesterday, referring to the University of Virginia board minutes, "should not only dispel any vestige of constitutional privilege merely should illustrate that having higher campuses free of weapons has nifty historical precedent."

Deal was appealing to gun-rights advocates' respect for history. Simply he landed on a different conclusion: The Second Amendment has its limits, and they're at the campus gates.

[Photo: Wikicommons]