Gun advocates, cameras descend on UAA

A highly-anticipated protest by Anchorage gun advocates on the campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage Wednesday turned out to be more of a media circus than anything else.

On Wednesday four armed men walked onto UAA's main quad, where journalists outnumbered guns by about five to one. A swarm of reporters and photographers documented the University of Alaska Police Department filling out Notices of Violation to the four men and politely asking them to step off campus. (The usual detail of three on-duty UAPD officers had been upped to seven for the occasion.)

The armed men agreeably moved their protest a few hundred feet south to stand on Providence Drive, where they and about 20 supporters waved to honking drivers and held up signs reading "Patriots protect our Constitution" and "Don't tread on me." A 65-year-old woman from Wasilla who goes by Tiger handed out cookies frosted with little black pistols.

Retired firefighter Andy Gordon stood with the protesters, sporting a Browning baseball cap.

"I'm just not optimistic at all about what's going to happen here in the next three or four years," he said. "Nobody gives a shit about the Constitution anymore."

The protesters were led by George Hines, a journalism student in his 40s who carries a Springfield .45. Hines is president of the Alaska Chapter of the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. (In other parts of the country SCCC stages "Empty Holder Protests.")

Hines orchestrated Wednesday's protest to draw attention to his message: People have a right to carry guns legally on UA campuses. In mid-April he argued his position (PDF)  before the university's board of regents at their meeting in Dillingham, saying the state constitution prohibits a political subdivision of the state (in this case, as Hines sees it, the UA system) from restricting Second Amendment rights.

UA President Mark Hamilton sent a letter (PDF)  to Hines in February, responding to Hines' arguments and asking him not to violate policy by staging a confrontation between armed students and university officials.

An Army grunt for six years in the 1980s and an HVAC installer after that, Hines said Saturday that he wants to be able to protect himself.

"32 people died in Virginia Tech, not because a cop wouldn't go in but because they couldn't get there fast enough," Hines said. He sat in the private back room of a greasy Chinese buffet in East Anchorage, where two dozen other men had gathered, along with a few sweet old ladies. They were ostensibly there to talk about carrying loaded weapons onto campus -- but they weren't just talking guns.