We're close to learning whether the National Rifle Association can be stood up to in Arkansas.
You're thinking we already know, and that the answer is no.
You're thinking Arkansas is perhaps the most gun-crazed along the wide swath of gun-crazed states. You're thinking rural Republican legislators--who have only lately taken over the state with the NRA's vital help--would in no way risk the NRA's displeasure.
You're thinking rural Republican legislators will do whatever it takes to avoid NRA mailings into homes in their districts giving them bad grades on gun issues as they face primary opponents vowing never to be the gun wusses they were.
But I'm here to tell you that I'm seeing actual resistance to the NRA at the state Capitol. It starts with Gov. Asa Hutchinson, once a spokesman for the gun lobby advocating firearms in schools, and extends to all but the most weirdly extreme in the Republican legislative caucus.
The quick background: Rep. Charlie Collins of Fayetteville had the bill to permit faculty and staff members at colleges who had concealed-carry permits to carry their weapons on campus. The state Senate amended it to say those persons could carry on campus, but only with an additional 16-hour State Police course in active-shooter situations. Collins compromised with Hutchinson to accept the 16-hour additional training but expand the eligible campus-carry population to students above the age of 25.
It was at that point that a couple of bigshots from NRA headquarters rolled into town. They did not like--and would not stand for--the idea that one of their reliable states would dare add any additional regulatory burden, meaning that 16-hour training, on citizens seeking to carry firearms.
The NRA's position was that the existing concealed-carry licensing process was imposition enough on the Second Amendment. It would accept nothing less than full permission for any person with a concealed-carry license--anybody, any age, student or teacher or staff member or visitor--to carry that gun on a college campus.
Rural Republican senators like Sen. Linda Collins-Smith of Pocahontas, hearing the NRA say "jump," dutifully leapt. Alas, so did Charlie Collins' co-sponsor in the Senate, meaning the man carrying the bill for him in that chamber--Sen. Trent Garner of El Dorado.
Garner, a freshman from the most pro-gun area of a pro-gun state, had set out merely to help Collins extend gun-carrying privileges on college and campuses. But suddenly he found himself inadvertently crossways with the NRA. He freaked.
He arranged to send the bill back to the Senate Judiciary Committee to be amended in the NRA's image. In case that didn't work, he filed a shell bill titled "constitutional carry."
That phrase, "constitutional carry," generally means a right to carry a gun under the concealed-carry license anywhere guns are permitted, and it is a fresh bill into which Garner could amend text as dictated by his NRA masters glowering from the Senate gallery.
To be clear to moms and dads: The NRA wants anybody with a concealed-carry permit, including any student of any age, to be allowed to run around our colleges carrying guns, and not to be inconvenienced by having to sit through any nettlesome additional State Police-provided training session in how to react if a mass shooting incident breaks out.
But get a load of this: As of this writing midday Wednesday, the NRA's local lobbyist seemed to be softening, understanding the local dynamic and that he didn't need to be crossways with an old gun-totin' friend like the governor. But the NRA's national headquarters ... well, it was merely wavering, or so I was told.
While in Washington earlier in the week, Asa dropped in on the national NRA folks to tell them the campus-carry fight back home was, as he put it in a press availability session Tuesday, "an Arkansas issue, not an NRA issue."
It is a new Arkansas indeed when the left flank on gun issues--or what passes for a left flank--is manned by a former NRA spokesman like Asa Hutchinson.
Has Hutchinson moderated or has Arkansas politics gone off the right-wing cliff?
Yes.
Some sort of compromise seems to be in the offing, depending on NRA headquarters and whether some of its legislative acolytes in Arkansas--such as Linda Collins-Smith--could be reasoned with.
It might come down to whether the NRA would agree not to use votes on the issue in its calculation of legislators' report cards. Perhaps they could vote for training and keep their precious A's.
Even if the NRA is stood up to, guns will be more prevalent on college campuses in September. That issue has been decided, at least until someone files suit citing the state constitutional provision that the Legislature can't tell colleges and universities how to run their business.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 03/02/2017