The College Fix

The Arizona legislature passed a bill that will allow the concealed carry of weapons on college campuses; the measure now awaits Governor Jan Brewer’s signature before becoming law. Several UA groups including the ASUA Senate and the Office of the President have loaded their chambers with disapproving ammunition, but if the bill is fired into law, UA students might potentially have a place on campus at which to try their aim: the firing range in the basement of Bear Down Gym.

Though the range is currently restricted to use by ROTC students, a student speaking on behalf of Students Against Guns in Education at the call to the audience of last week’s Board of Regents meeting asserted that if this bill becomes law, the Board of Regents should train students and faculty in the proper use of firearms. Lucky for the Regents, there is already a facility for this use right here under the Mall. From a 2004 Wildcat article:

For more than a decade, the UA has been a “weapons-free” campus.

But buried beneath Bear Down Gym are the signs of a tradition that has gone on at the UA for far longer.

Beneath the students playing basketball and lifting weights is a shooting range built in 1926, the year the UA signed a contract with ROTC as part of its land grant mission...The range, a small unthreatening room, was built as part of a contract with the Army ROTC, said Maj. Stewart Slatton, public affairs officer for the Army ROTC. It has been an important, if often unnoticed, element of the program ever since.

Aside from the myriad incendiary debates on the issue of guns on campus, this article includes a note of straight-up badass awesome:

Students who can’t actually visit the range can see movies to satisfy their curiosity. Slatton said the range in Bear Down has been used in several movies, including “Death Wish,” the super-violent Charles Bronson classic from 1974. Slatton said tables were set up at the shooting range for “Death Wish” to make the range seem larger and less plain; some of those tables and other props from the film still remain.

Regardless of Governor Brewer’s decision, it will probably be a while before students can participate in this particularly virile piece of UA history. But until then, here is that clip of Charles Bronson and his dead-on conscientious objection:

Anna Swenson is an editor of and blogs at the Desert Lamp. She is a member of the Student Free Press Association.

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