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srothstein wrote:Actually, in the long run, this may be a good thing for us. I do not believe that any zoo would meet the definition of an educational institution as intended int he law BUT it is a term that needs a definition. And this case is just about the perfect argument for us (through TSRA) to get some legislators to look at the law and clarify exactly what they intended.

Is a truck driving school an educational institution? What about a real estate school? How would these differ from University of Phoenix in the eyes of the law? All of them are privately owned, for profit, and lead to some type of certificate or licensing. UofP is accredited for college but the law does not require that. The zoo does teach people but does not lead to a certificate or license. Is it an educational institution? How can you say no? What criterion define "educational institution"?

It is time to clarify exactly what the law is meant to say. Maybe if we get a few legislators upset enough, we can fix this problem in the law for all of these situations.

Fantasy land to me then would be that we have access to an ability to take things like this and to be able to quickly and easily turn them into responsive calls to action. An online form that we could go to, plug in your address and it picks the legislative members who need to receive it, creates and populates an email that takes the call to action message and then sends it. VCDL uses that kind of a system to get the attention of the legislature and it is quite effective. I think that if we had that and folks used it, it would make it significantly easier to get points like that across to the legislature. The added bonus is that even if your particular legislative member is...not in our camp...it would make it easier to make it known that their constituents do care about things like this. Fire and forget, until a day when it can be shown through system stats just how many messages did go to an unresponsive legislative member (which addresses the point that Chas. made regarding doctors asking about guns and then the antis use that lack of response as claim that gun ownership is on decline).

RKirkwood wrote:"The zoo, Wallace added, “maintains an Education Department that employs 17 professional educators who develop and deliver educational programming on a daily basis at the Zoo.” "

So does that make gun stores and ranges educational institutes since they teach gun safety?

Yes, but only if they do it for the children....