AURORA | Lifting the concealed weapons ban at the University of Colorado was about more than a single campus or institution for Jim Manley.
Manley, the director of the local chapter of Students for Concealed Carry and a staff attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, started his campaign against the ban with a court case in El Paso County four years ago. That fight made it all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court, where Manley and the three CU students he represented enjoyed a victory earlier this year. The court ruled that the university’s nine-member Board of Regents had overstepped their authority in implementing the ban, a policy that extended to campuses in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs and the School of Medicine in Aurora.
Manley says that the impact of that ruling went far beyond those four sites.
“The first effect was after we won at the court of appeals, the Colorado Community College Sytem board rescinded its concealed carry ban for all of its campuses. That happened in 2010,” Manley said. “Since our victory at the Supreme Court, every other public government college in the state has also rescinded bans … We’re very happy with that. We’re happy with the fact that concealed carry is respected on all college campuses across the state.”
That policy has come under a new degree of critique in the weeks following the shootings that took place at the Century Aurora 16 theaters on July 20, an attack that killed 18 and injured 58. In the weeks following the tragedy, the public debate shifted to familiar and controversial questions of gun control and access to firearms, with a particular emphasis on the presence of weapons at college campuses.
The University of Colorado’s tentative plans to set aside separate housing units on the school’s Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses for students with concealed weapons permits drew immediate controversy, as did a CU faculty chairman’s comment that he’d cancel any class before he allowed a student carrying a gun to attend.
None of the public and private arguments have derailed the progress of the new concealed carry policy in Colorado. At the Community College of Aurora campuses in Aurora and Lowry, for example, administrators are following the Supreme Court’s decision.
“The state was very clear,” said CCA President Alton Scales. “What some of the four-year institutions that makes sense to me is prohibiting (weapons) from residence halls … The faculty doesn’t have the authority to cancel classes. I’m not aware of any of our faculty that have taken that position … We’re not in the business of taking on the state when the law is clear.”
The new allowance at schools like CCA shows how the Supreme Court’s decision has had an impact at campuses across Colorado. Still, the effect may be felt in a unique way at the University of Colorado’s Aurora campus, where the medical school shares space with Children’s Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado Hospital, both of which are administered separately from the university itself.
The policy at Children’s Hospital Colorado, for example, hasn’t changed with the Supreme Court verdict. Weapons are allowed only to law enforcement officials from “a city, county, state or federal jurisdiction” or “uniformed security staff.”
“Weapons are expressly prohibited on any of Children’s Hospital Colorado properties, unless in the possession of a law enforcement officer or a security staff,” said Children’s Hospital Colorado spokeswoman Elizabeth Whitehead, adding that the number of security personnel who carry firearms vary.
While the weapons policy at the University of Colorado Hospital is administered separately from the university, the Supreme Court decision has already had an effect, albeit vague. Officials said the hospital’s previous ban — one similar to the policy at Children’s Hospital Colorado that made exceptions for only certified law enforcement officers and security program staff — will be re-examined in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. University of Colorado Hospital Spokesman Dan Weaver added that until a new, formal policy is in place, the ban for concealed carry permit holders will continue.
As far as the network of private businesses and medical companies that surround the roughly 227-acre medical campus in Aurora, owners still have the option of barring weapons from their property under state law. In that sense, concealed carry defenders like Manley say the situation in Aurora isn’t too much of a leap from the layout of urban campuses in Denver, Colorado Springs and Boulder.
“CU Boulder and CU Colorado Springs are part of the cities that they’re in. Someone who didn’t know better could easily find themselves walking from Boulder onto campus,” Manley said. “In that situation, the policy is now going to be completely the same.”
The renewed gun debate in the months following the shootings in Aurora has not swayed the SCC’s underlying argument. In the past, the organization has argued that lifting the ban is a question of safety, citing school shootings at Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University in discussing student access to concealed weapons.
“It’s completely illogical to try to say we’re going to try to maintain gun-free zones as a response to the shooting when the theater itself was a gun-free zone,” Manley said, adding that he was not speaking on behalf of the SCC. “We think the Supreme Court decision was a total victory.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707