More On Iowa Campus Police Not Yet Being Allowed to Carry Guns.

David Yepsen usually strikes me as a fairly mild mannered guy, but he just can't seem to restrain himself in discussing the opposition and delays in letting campus police carrying guns at Iowa's public universities. Yepsen surely understands the issues of deterrence and incapacitation:

Just when I was worried about finding new entertainment once the caucuses clear out of here in January, along comes the Board of Regents and the Des Moines School Board.

The regents act like the guys in charge of traffic control at a Tom Harkin steak fry.

They're a joke. This time, it's over the important security issue of whether to arm campus cops. The officers have asked for years to carry firearms. Most other college security officers do. The security chiefs at the universities want their officers to carry firearms, too.

But not in Iowa. We don't have mass shootings like they did at Virginia Tech. (Well, not very often anyway.)

It took that tragedy in Virginia to wake up everyone else. Now, the three state university presidents in Iowa are recommending campus peace officers at their schools be armed. That ought to be the end of it. The CEOs of the institutions have spoken. . . .

Another viewpoint is seen here:

Steinke said the regents feel they need more information before such a plan could be approved. According to Steinke, regents feel they need additional information on the type of ammunition the officers would use, the certification that they would be required to complete prior to carrying weapons and whether there would be background checks and psychological profiles of the officers carrying weapons. . . . .

Clearly, those are legitimate concerns. Equally clearly, they are concerns that can be addressed in a matter of days - certainly not weeks or months - by reviewing the existing policies of Iowa's existing law enforcement agencies and the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy.