PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
Though he was carrying a gun, eight-year police officer George Sullivan was killed with an ax on the University of Nevada, Reno campus on January 13, 1998. This bench in his memory was placed near the site of the murder.
Tahoe clarity gains There may not be much water in Lake Tahoe, but at least it’s getting clearer. Six days after the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service announced the Sierra snow pack was at an all time low, scientists at the Tahoe Environmental Research Center and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency said the lake has its greatest clarity in a decade. In a prepared statement, TERC director Geoffrey Schladow addressed the good news/bad news mix. “Complete restoration is still decades away, and some of the greatest challenges still lie ahead of us,” he said. “We are enduring drier and warmer conditions than we have ever encountered, and the restoration consequences of that are still far from understood.”
First come Two measures are being processed by the Nevada Legislature that seek to grab public lands away from the federal government on grounds that the feds are not allowed to own land. (Article 4, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution makes reference to “property belonging to the United States,” but never mind.) The intention is for states to take over that land (“Never land,” RN&R, April 9). But who says the states would get the land if federal title was extinguished?? If a miracle happened and the feds lost title to the land, and the matter was opened up legally, state governments won’t necessarily be first in line. There are other groups with earlier claims to being sagebrush rebels, and Native Americans are at the top of the list. We’re not talking about the famous but episodic land grabs, which are claim enough. We’re referring to a more carefully plotted and institutionalized theft—the General Allotment Act of 1887. That measure, also known as the Dawes Act, stripped tribes of the lands they held in common and parceled out individual plots of land to individual members. A lot of tribal land disappeared in the process. There was also—heh-heh—a provision in the law for “excess” tribal lands to be sold off, thus allowing whites to gain title to tribal lands. The allotment policy was ended in 1934 as a result of the Roosevelt administration’s Indian Reorganization Act (also known as the Wheeler-Howard Law or the Indian New Deal). Over the course of those 47 years, the number of Native Americans in the U.S. increased by about a fifth. During the same period, the lands the tribes held fell by 65 percent, from 138 million acres to 48 million acres, according to an A.J. Liebling account of whites squatting on Nevada tribal land. The Walker River Paiutes lost more than a quarter-million acres in 1906 alone. This is an injustice that was administered and carefully recorded, so reversing the result and returning the lands to the tribes is entirely possible. But no one has ever tried. The tribes still claim their lost lands, but they don’t employ rifles and violence to make their case. Then there are the original Atlantic coast colonies. They were given land stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The Second Charter of Virginia gave it land crossing North America from Jamestown to the Pacific. Virginia’s latitudes are 36° 32’ N to 39° 28’ N. Extend those to the Pacific and Virginia would take possession of a portion of Nevada running from approximately just south of the Las Vegas Valley to Carson City, encompassing several counties. By the way, references to turning western land “back” to the states or of “returning” it to the states ignores history—the West was never state land. It was acquired directly by the federal government through theft, treaty, aggression, purchase, and conquest at a time when few white men existed in the West, much less owned property.
—Dennis Myers
8 | RN&R |
APRIL 16, 2015
Gun issue sparks activism Insurance risks not addressed by lawmakers On Sept. 2 at Idaho State in Pocatello, a few weeks after a new guns-on-campus law took effect, chemistry professor by Byron Bennett was lecturing a classDennis Myers room containing 20 students when a gun somehow fell out of his pocket and fired. No student was hit, but Bennett himself—a former University of Nevada, Las Vegas instructor—was shot in the foot. He had weapons permits from both Idaho and Utah and had apparently taken instruction in gun use because the Idaho law requires it.
“Educators and school boards should be aware of the risk exposures [they] could face by allowing firearms on campus.” Professional Governmental Underwriters, Inc. Competing arguments on rape and guns on campus can be read at www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ counterpoint-rapesurvivor-argues-whywe-need-guns-campus and www.change.org/p/ arizona-state-housedon-t-vote-to-allowguns-on-collegecampuses
It was the kind of incident college administrators fear will happen under guns-on-campus laws, and the kind that insurance companies also watch. Nevada legislators who are now considering enacting a law allowing guns to be carried on campus by people over 21 have given very little attention to the insurance issue, and
the measures they are processing do not contain language providing funding if insurance costs rise following the approval of any legislation. Veteran public counsel—attorneys who have served as counsel for public agencies—have asked why the Nevada higher education system has not asked for immunity language to be included in the bills. There has been very little study of the implications of guns in society because the influence of the National Rifle Association has kept federal funding for such studies unavailable. But insurance companies have their own data-accumulation operations, so their policy decisions in reacting to guns-on-campus bills are revealing. In 2013, after Kansas enacted legislation allowing teachers and administrators to carry guns at school, EMC Insurance—which insured nearly all of the state’s school districts—ordered its agents to decline coverage to any district allowing the practice. However, some insurance companies have been willing to provide insurance at reasonable cost in spite of increased risk. In Texas, which has a limited law allowing guns on campus if kept in cars, an insurance pool spread the risk around and held down costs. University of Nevada, Reno risk manager Sue Dunt said she does not
anticipate any increase in the campus’s insurance because state government is shielded by a statutory tort limit and thus carries no liability insurance. The campus is otherwise insured through a state program. State tort claims manager Nancy Katafias was not available for comment. “There’s no indication that there would be any increase,” Dunt said. The website of Professional Governmental Underwriters, Inc. cautions, “Educators and school boards considering any policy changes regarding firearms should be aware of the risk exposures their institution could face by allowing firearms on campus.” An insurance blog that deals with education risks included this post last year: “Many members have asked us what a firearms and weapons policy should include. ... Policies should include: a clear statement as to whether or not weapons are allowed on your campus, the purpose of the policy, groups the policy applies to, and finally a section on relevant procedures, such as proper gun storage on campus and exceptions to your policy.” But those policies tend to address situations where carrying guns on campus is limited to teachers and administrators. The Nevada proposal seeks to allow anyone over 21 with weapons permits—students, campus employees, passersby—to all carry weapons on campus. When a student enrolls on campus because of a marketing pitch, it can increase a campus’s liability. In Nevada, that could mean that campus cutbacks by the Legislature will come home to roost. Since 2007, the state has drastically cut higher education and told the campuses to—as one attorney puts it—“make it up in volume” by attracting more students and more tuition. Colleges that use assurances of safety to lure students to attend (Western Nevada College website: “Continuing efforts are being made to create and maintain a safe campus.”) that are then undercut by actual events may well find themselves facing greater risk in the courtroom.
Related issues Supporters of guns on campus have been advocating it as a rape preventive, and the National Rifle Association has sponsored legislative
