Sen. Trent Garner, on a 21-10 vote, sent the campus carry bill back to Senate committee. And he has more legislation to further the carrying of weapons in Arkansas.
The NRA, which calls most shots on gun bills in Arkansas, now opposes the campus carry bill primarily because it adds an additional training requirement before anyone 25 and older can take a concealed weapon on a public college campus.
The so-called compromise amendment that will allow anyone 25 or older with a training certificate carry a concealed weapon on public college campuses was approved in a Senate committee this afternoon.
Sen. Trent Garner, the Tom Cotton employee and clone who joined the Arkansas Senate this year, has proposed an amendment to the campus carry bill that would open campuses to anyone 25 or older with a concealed carry permit if they received an additional 16 hours of training.
Rep. Greg Leding reports on Twitter that Rep. Charlie Collins just had the House vote down a higher education appropriation in retaliation for Senate amendment added to his campus carry bill.
The Senate this morning added an amendment to Rep. Charlie Collins campus carry bill that incorporates the effort denied in committee yesterday to require a 16-hour additional training period before university staff members with concealed carry permits may take the weapons on campus.
Rep. Charlie Collins' bill to mandate that universities allow staff with permits to carry concealed weapons on campus will be before a Senate committee Wednesday and one opponent, John Pijanoski, chair of the Campus Faculty Senate at the University of Arkansas, has written about another problem with the legislation (apart from near universal campus opposition.)
Multiple University of Arkansas at Fayetteville faculty members have told us that they have been warned about legislators monitoring Facebook looking for faculty members who make political posts between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
On Capitol View over the weekend, Rep. Michelle Gray, a backer of Charlie Collins bill to force public universities and colleges to allow staff members to carry concealed handguns, faced off against Austin Bailey, director of the Arkansas Chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a citizens group which opposes the bill.