New Bill Would Allow For Guns On Maine College Campuses

AUGUSTA, MAINE — Maine legislature is considering a bill that would permit concealed carriers to carry on college campuses, The Forecaster reports.

According to The Forecaster, the bill, LD 1370, would impact the University of Southern Maine as well as the Southern Maine Community College. Private universities would not be affected.

According to a summary of the bill provided from the state legislature’s website:

“This bill provides that the Board of Trustees of the University of Maine System, the Board of Trustees of the Maine Community College System and the Board of Trustees of the Maine Maritime Academy may adopt rules and establish policies relating to firearms except that these rules and policies may not regulate or prohibit the otherwise lawful possession, carrying or transporting of firearms or ammunition by a person issued a permit to carry a concealed handgun under the Maine Revised Statutes…”

Carriers would not be permitted to carry in certain places — dorms, foremost, are not included in this bill.

“The bill also provides, with certain exceptions, that a person issued a permit to carry a concealed handgun… may not carry a concealed weapon within a student dormitory or residence hall or within a building of a public entertainment facility at which signs are conspicuously posted at entrances notifying attendees of any restriction on the possession of firearms in the facility during a game or event,” the summary continues.

Of course, there are some opposed to the measure.

Representative Andrew McLean, a Democrat, thinks it’s an awful idea.

“I personally don’t want to be sitting in a room alone with someone who is packing heat,” McLean, who also works for the University of Southern Maine, said in an email Monday according to The Forecaster.

Yeah. Because we all know how few concealed carriers there are out there and the chances of his having had that exact thing happening to him are pretty low.

You go, Maine. Push it through.

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