UCI gun scare is a good lesson

The University of California, Irvine experienced a scare last week when a student reported seeing a man dressed in camouflage carrying what appeared to be a rifle near campus. According to this article, after security sent a mass notification message out to the student body, several other students confirmed seeing a person matching that description and carrying a gun.

As it turns out, the man was carrying a paintball rifle and headed out to the range to shoot with some friends, which, in this post-Virginia Tech time, is really pretty stupid. Frankly, I'm not familiar enough with guns to know the difference and if I saw someone walking around in camo carrying a gun I'd get real freaked out, too.

The university didn't go into lock down or issue an evacuation, but did ask students and staff to stay inside. And while this fortunately turned out to be a false alarm, I think there was more than enough reason for the university to take these steps. After all, better safe than sorry. Plus, it never hurts to test these emergency notification systems.