This weekend we talked about a raft of new laws which Governor Jerry Brown signed off on in California, including automatically registering everyone who walks into a DMV office as a voter. But that wasn’t all that Jerry had up his sleeve. There was another bill awaiting his signature which would ban concealed carry permit holders from bring their weapons onto the grounds of public schools and colleges. For a guy like Governor Brown, that one was clearly a no brainer. (Fox News)

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill banning concealed weapons from California schools and universities, a measure that drew renewed attention after a recent massacre at an Oregon community college. SB707 by Democratic Sen. Lois Wolk of Davis will prohibit people with concealed weapons permits from carrying firearms on school and college campuses. People who have concealed carry permits would be allowed to carry firearms within 1,000 feet of a public or private K-12 school, but not on the grounds.

If the man wasn’t already 77 years old I’d think he was running for President. So in the wake of yet another gun free zone being shot to pieces a bit up the coast from his state, Brown has decided to respond by ensuring that every school in the state maintains its gun free zone status. That’s just brilliant, isn’t it?

Of course, the way the law is worded it’s actually rather toothless. Concealed carry holders are forbidden to come within 1,000 feet of a school unless either the local police or the school district have put their own carry laws in place for the schools. This is basically a state law which was passed with its own anti-supremacy clause baked into the cake. Any district that doesn’t like the Governor’s rules can simply instate their own policy saying that permit holders can carry on school grounds. The only time the rule would have any impact would be in the case of districts that have no policy on the books to cover this whatsoever.

But that’s really not the point of the bill from the way things look. Brown is reacting in a typical, progressive fashion to the last school shootings and just trying to make it look like he’s doing something – anything – rather than being carried along on the tides of history. Unfortunately the message he’s sending is that potential shooters should keep their Google Maps app up on their phones and find all the local K-12 classes. It’s open season in California.

Contrast this to Texas, where opponents are struggling to figure out how to implement the Campus Carry law which goes into effect next year. (CNN)

The bill many know as the “campus carry” law is scheduled to go into effect August 1, the 50-year anniversary of the UT Tower sniper shooting, one of the first mass murders on a college campus in America. “We are going to follow the law, and we are going to have to figure out the best way to do that to maintain the appropriate campus life, to keep our faculty and our staff and visitors as safe as possible,” McRaven told CNN. Groups known as “working committees” at each Texas college are researching ideas on how the laws should be implemented, and will report their findings later this year to the Chancellor’s office. McRaven said the law creates an “environment of unknown.”

We should revisit this in about five years and see how many school shootings take place in Texas vs California. No matter which way it breaks, the results should prove instructive.