Gun-Free Zones: Overview

Introduction

As incidents of mass shootings have continued to occur at alarming rates in the United States despite its status as a developed country, in venues that vary from office buildings to schools to music concerts, debates have persisted about why such events occur and how best to prevent them. These conversations, which also consider general gun-related violent crime and suicides, often revolve around issues including mental health and gun control. Within this discussion, attention has been given to the role of gun-free zones, or public areas where firearms are banned for private citizens (except for security officers), and whether these zones are effective in reducing the risk of gun-related violence, injury, and death. The gun-free zones debate has been hampered, however, by disagreement on the basic definition of the primary terms “gun-free zones” and “mass shootings.”

Gun-rights activists have long argued that an armed populace is key to preventing mass shootings, an argument that gained traction and attention during the 2017–21 presidency of Donald Trump. In a speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in May 2018, Trump repeated a statistic published by researcher John Lott that over 98 percent of mass shootings since 1950 had occurred in places where people are banned from carrying guns. This research has been used by supporters of eliminating gun-free zones as proof that they are little more than advertisements for mass shooters to operate without fear of armed defense from their intended victims. Opponents of gun-free zones point to examples of armed civilians who were able to halt a shooting in progress.

Defenders of gun-free zones, on the other hand, dispute the Lott study as far too broad. Claiming that many gun-related incidents have taken place in areas where guns are not specifically prohibited, proponents of gun-free zones stress that they play a part in reducing impulsive crimes, with gun-related crimes, accidents, and suicides generally occurring less frequently in these areas. Supporters of gun-free zones point to mass shootings where armed citizens or security personnel were present and failed to deter the shooter, as well as to the difficulty of controlling a situation with multiple shooters, even if some are trying to stop the perpetrator. In addition, they argue, since most mass shootings take place in a location that is familiar to the shooter, the presence or absence of gun-free zones does not have an impact on the selection.

Understanding the Discussion

Gun-Free Schools Act: A 1994 federal law stipulating a period of expulsion for any student found to have brought a firearm onto school grounds.

Gun-Free School Zones Act: A federal law passed in 1990 that made it illegal to possess a firearm on or within a certain distance of school grounds; however, specific exceptions, such as state licenses, existed.

National Rifle Association (NRA): A nonprofit gun-rights advocacy organization founded in 1871.

United States v. Lopez: A 1995 Supreme Court decision which ruled that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit gun possession in school zones under the commerce clause of the Constitution.

History

Violence prevention and public safety have always been concerns of the public, policymakers, and government in the United States, and the advancement and general availability of technology and weaponry (whether legally or illegally) has only increased efforts to deter violent crime. While it has been acknowledged that societal and mental health factors play a role in the occurrence of violent events and the motives behind them, in some cases attempts have been made over the years at federal and state levels to reduce events such as murders, suicides, and injuries by limiting the presence of harmful weapons, particularly firearms, in certain areas. To this end, the Gun-Free School Zones Act was passed in 1990 as part of a sweeping anti-crime bill. Meant to address gun violence related to gangs and drug trafficking, the law initially prohibited the possession or discharge of a firearm on school grounds or within 1,000 feet of the school. However, the authority of Congress to legislate gun-control measures under the broad umbrella of interstate commerce was challenged in the Supreme Court in 1994 in the case of Alfonzo Lopez, a high school student who brought a concealed weapon into school. He was charged under the 1990 act, since the gun was brought into a prohibited zone. The Supreme Court ultimately found in his favor the following year.

Facing the dismantling of the act, a new version was presented in the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997. In addition, the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA) augmented the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 by targeting student behavior in schools, enacting a minimum expulsion of one year for any student bringing a firearm into a school. Certain exceptions were written into both of these acts, including for those with state licenses, for firearms used for training, and for firearms used by security; there is also some discretion written into the acts for individual states or school officials to modify their provisions. Because of this, the discrepancy between states is significant.

Federal regulations also generally prohibit civilians and military personnel not engaged in security duties from carrying personal or concealed weapons on military bases. In February 1992, the Department of Defense issued a rule curtailing the carrying of firearms on base by military personnel, with an exception for situations where “a reasonable expectation that life or DoD assets will be jeopardized if firearms are not carried” was present. In November 2016, a directive issued by the Defense Department during the Barack Obama administration loosened restrictions on military bases, allowing commanders to grant permission to carry a privately owned firearm for a limited time “for a personal protection purpose.”

State and local laws also govern restrictions on where guns are allowed, and these laws vary widely across the country. Many states prohibit guns in bars or while consuming alcohol as well as in airport terminals, hospitals, courtrooms, and government buildings. Most states regulate or prohibit guns on college campuses, or allow the institutions to restrict them, but this is far from universal. In addition to schools, military bases, and other commonly restricted areas, there are a wide variety of places, such as churches, that could be defined as “gun-free zones” because of their prohibition by state or local regulations, or their restriction by business owners or organizations.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump targeted the elimination of gun-free zones as a priority for his administration. While his promise of completing this goal on day one in office did not occur, his comments regarding the dangers of gun-free zones, repeated at campaign rallies and then in public speeches across the country, served to raise further awareness of a key issue to both gun-control proponents and gun-rights activists. During his presidency from 2017 to 2021, Trump and his administration drew attention to federal regulations that they claimed encouraged such incidents, particularly shootings at schools and on military bases. Legislation known as the Safe Students Act was introduced at the start of the Trump administration in the House of Representatives to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. This bill stalled out in committee, however, as lawmakers focused their attention on the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, which would allow for the carrying of a concealed handgun across state lines, significantly reducing the ability of individual states to enact gun-control restrictions; it passed the House in December 2017.

After widely publicized mass shootings, such as those that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 or at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, gun-rights activists argued that such incidents could have been prevented if bystanders had been armed, and pointed to shootings, including one at a Texas church in 2017 and one at an Oklahoma City restaurant in May 2018, where armed bystanders confronted an attacker (with the suspect at the Oklahoma restaurant actually being killed by the bystanders). Supporters of gun control in general, and gun-free zones in particular, meanwhile, were quick to point out cases when armed security personnel had failed to prevent or stop mass shootings, such as at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 and Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, when security guards were accused of ineffective or nonexistent engagement of the subject. Regardless, by 2018, while some states had instituted greater gun-control measures, other states had begun introducing or implementing changes to policies in favor of fewer restrictions, including in areas once considered gun free.

Gun-Free Zones Today

On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 6–3 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen that New York State's 100-year-old concealed-handgun licensing law was unconstitutional, as the plaintiffs had argued. The law required an individual to prove that a proper cause existed before the state issued them a concealed-carry license, and New York had defended its concealed-carry law, arguing that the right to carry a gun for self-defense outside the home was not absolute. SCOTUS decided that New York's proper-cause requirement violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it prevented law-abiding citizens who had no special self-defense vulnerabilities from exercising their Second Amendment right to carry and keep arms. The Bruen decision was SCOTUS's first major Second Amendment decision since 2008, when it ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to own a gun for self-defense. SCOTUS's decision in Bruen also affirmed the doctrine it established in Heller that there are so-called sensitive places where carrying firearms could be prohibited without violating the Second Amendment. While the court named polling places, legislative bodies, and courthouses as sensitive spaces, it did not clearly define what it meant by the phrase beyond these examples. In addition to overturning New York's law, Bruen also affected several other states with gun licensing laws similar to New York's, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Advocates for gun safety regulation anticipated that these states would see an increase in the number of guns carried in public and a corresponding increase in gun violence.

The Bruen decision prompted New York State to pass the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) to address the impact of SCOTUS's ruling, including an anticipated increase in the number of people carrying firearms in public spaces and further challenges to other existing gun laws. Among other provisions, the CCIA provided a much more extensive list of sensitive spaces, or gun-free zones, than Bruen. As noted by Margaret J. Finerty for the New York State Bar Association, New York's gun-free zones include "places of worship; educational institutions; courthouses; federal, state and local government buildings; polling sites; public transportation such as subways and buses; health and medical facilities; entertainment venues; shelters, including homeless and domestic violence; daycare facilities; playgrounds and places where children gather; airports; bars and restaurants where alcohol is served; entertainment venues; libraries; public demonstrations and rallies; and Times Square."

Upon being signed into law on July 1, 2022, the CCIA was subsequently challenged in court by gun owners who said it infringed their constitutional rights, even before it took effect on September 1 of that year. Opponents of the law also criticized it as confusing.

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Bibliography

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