Mike Levin: “in order to get a handle on today's gun violence among students, we must increase our awareness on the issue. Last week…”

“in order to get a handle on today's gun violence among students, we must increase our awareness on the issue. Last week, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence released a report that draws attention to the gun lobby's efforts over the past few years to change college campus rules that prohibit firearms. The report details the gun lobby's efforts in multiple States to pressure colleges to allow the possession and use of firearms by students and others on campus. The report, ``No Gun Left Behind: The Gun Lobby's Campaign to Push Guns into Colleges and Schools,'' reveals a letter addressed to a Maine legislator from the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action on April 2, 2007, emphatically opposing legislation to ``allow any college or university to regulate the possession of firearms on the property of the college or university.'' It also describes the gun lobby's support for a law passed in Utah that expressly prohibits public school districts, public schools, and State institutions of higher education from keeping guns off campuses. Similar legislation was proposed in Virginia last year. ``Our schools should be sanctuaries, not armed camps,'' stated Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Center. ``Institutions of higher education already have chosen policies either banning or tightly controlling guns on campus. That is as it should be.…”