'Campus Carry' Bill Advances Through Georgia Senate

ATLANTA, GA -- A bill that would allow licensed gun holders to carry concealed weapons on public college campuses passed the Georgia Senate on Tuesday, setting up an imminent showdown with the governor in the last days of the legislative season.

The so-called "Campus Carry" bill would allow concealed handguns on public college grounds as long as the owner is 21 and older and has a permit from the state.

“Frequently, invisible lines distinguish our college and university campuses from other properties — but we should never allow these overlapping boundaries to deny us our constitutional rights,” Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said Tuesday after the Senate vote, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This thoughtful compromise protects the fundamental right to lawfully carry, which belongs to all Georgians.”

Read more: Campus Carry bill passes Senate panel

The OK from the Senate means that for the second year in a row, a bill that would allow weapons in the classrooms and hallways of higher education has made it deep within the state lawmaking body. Last year, contentious debate surrounded the issue, especially in the wake of a number of mass shootings that unnerved the public.
This year, House Bill 280, which stipulates that buildings where high schoolers attend classes be exempted, is one step closer to becoming law.

But there are critics of the legislation. The Georgia chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is adamant that handguns have no place among the state's learning institutions.
"As Governor Deal pointed out last year, when Presidents Jefferson and Madison sat on the Board of Visitors to the University of Virginia, they explicitly rejected allowing guns on campus, solidifying the widely accepted idea that our schools should remain safe havens for learning," Lindsey Donovan, volunteer chapter leader of the group, said in a statement.

Gov. Nathan Deal has also long expressed misgivings about the legislation, saying before he vetoed a similar measure last year that, "From the early days of our nation and state, colleges have been treated as sanctuaries of learning where firearms have not been allowed. To depart from such time-honored protections should require overwhelming justification. I do not find that such justification exists."

Image courtesy of Tiffany Johnson