A Senate committee rejected an amendment to a guns-on-campus bill Wednesday that would have required that college faculty members receive training before taking concealed handguns onto campus.
House Bill 1249 would require public colleges and universities to allow their staff members to carry concealed handguns. The bill received a favorable endorsement Wednesday from the Senate Judiciary Committee, sending it to the upper chamber.
Under current law, passed in 2̶0̶1̶5̶ 2013*, colleges may opt to allow staff members with concealed-carry gun permits to take their weapons onto campus, but no public colleges in the state have chosen to do so. College administrators, as well as campus and city police departments, have largely lined up against HB1249 by Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville.
The amendment was offered by the committee chairman, Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock. He said his amendment for a 16-hour training requirement would potentially ease security concerns from police and campus administrators. But proponents of the bill questioned the costs and necessity of enhanced training regarding how to handle a situation when someone is using deadly force on campus.
The committee later approved sending the bill to the full Senate by a voice vote, and the only nay came from Sen. Will Bond of Little Rock, the only Democrat on the committee.
After the favorable votes by the committee and, earlier, the House, opponents conceded that the bill was unlikely to be held up in the Republican Senate.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has said he favors the status quo, but has not stated whether he will veto the measure if it reaches his desk. A spokesman said the governor was supportive of the amendment by his nephew, Sen. Hutchinson, but declined to say how that would have affected his view on the bill.
"The hardest step in the legislative process, typically for a House bill, is the Senate committee," Collins said. "I'm excited that we were able to get through that today."
The bill's staunchest opponent in the House, Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, whose district includes the University of Arkansas campus, offered a more definitive outlook.
"There's no chance of it dying on the Senate floor," Leding said.
Just as what happened when the bill was considered in House committee, a wall-to-wall crowd was in the Senate committee room.
Speaking against the bill, Arkansas State University System President Chuck Welch pointed to two recent campus lockdowns -- one a real threat, the other not -- that ended without any shots being fired after a quick police response.
"Sometimes it's not about the shots that are fired but about the shots that are not fired," Welch said.
But the state liaison for the National Rifle Association -- rebutting Welch's testimony as "anecdotal talk about incidents here and there" -- said fears were unfounded about concealed weapons on campuses leading to accidents and confusion during shooting situations.
A Section on 02/16/2017
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*CORRECTION: An act allowing staff members of public colleges and universities to take concealed handguns onto campus with a proper permit, unless the board of their institution adopted a policy stating otherwise, was passed by the state Legislature in 2013. A previous version of this article misstated the year that law went into effect.