A hard-line gun rights group in Virginia isn’t pleased with how the state’s super-conservative attorney general is defending a state university’s right to ban guns in school buildings — especially since he once called the ban indefensible.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League wrote an open letter yesterday to the AG, Ken Cuccinelli, accusing him of throwing his principles “in the trash” for his brief defending George Mason University for prohibiting firearms in university buildings, including the library and dorms.
In the brief, filed as part of a lawsuit in front of the state supreme court, Cuccinelli argues that the university counts as a “sensitive place,” where firearms may be regulated without infringing on the Second Amendment. It’s a sensitive place, he said, because the campus is often full of children, including freshmen who are under 18, grade-schoolers who attend summer camps at the school and the preschool children of employees.
“Without the regulation, the University’s safety is seriously compromised,” he wrote in part. “Any person who wishes to enter Fenwick Library with a sidearm, could not only frighten students and minors such as preschoolers, but also expose them to unnecessary risks such as accidental discharge.”
To make such an emotional argument, says VCDL president Philip Van Cleave, is an “unconscionable” act of “fear mongering.”
“You could use any of those [reasons] as an excuse to ban guns anywhere,” Van Cleave told TPM today.
It’s a 180 from what Cuccinelli told the VCDL when he was campaigning in December 2008. In a Q&A, he responded to “the college question” and said the university doesn’t have “the legal authority to pass the regulations they are passing that trump what the General Assembly has said.” Cuccinelli, then a state senator, suggested the only way around it was to file suit.
Watch, starting at about 5:34:
“As a senator, he did a good job,” Van Cleave said. “I don’t know what’s going on now.”
Van Cleave says he understands that Cuccinelli has to defend the university. But he wishes Cuccinelli would have recused himself from the case, or at least skipped the emotional arguments.
He said he hasn’t yet gotten a response from the attorney general.
Cuccinelli could not immediately be reached for comment.
