Campus representatives urge Deal to dump gun bill

Published 10:47 pm Friday, April 15, 2016

ATLANTA — Pressure is growing on Gov. Nathan Deal to veto a bill allowing guns on Georgia’s college campuses.

So is speculation over whether the Republican, endorsed by the National Rifle Association, will risk angering conservatives again after vetoing a religious liberty bill amid concerns that it would allow discrimination.

Some parents, students and university leaders — including Valdosta State University’s interim president — are urging Deal to scrap the bill. Advocacy groups have also ramped up efforts to defeat it.

A spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, which has bought TV and newspaper ads opposing the bill, said about 30,000 people have signed petitions, texted, called or sent emails urging the governor to veto the measure.

Deal has until May 3 to decide.

“I have no clue,” said the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Rick Jasperse, R-Jasper, when asked how Deal might act.

But, just in case, Jasperse said lawmakers are talking about who might sponsor a campus carry bill next year. If not him, someone will continue to press for it, he said.

The measure that passed this legislative session allows gun owners who have a license to carry and who are at least 21 years old to take their firearm onto Georgia’s public college campuses.

Student housing and athletic venues, such as football stadiums, remain off-limits.

The campus-carry proposal at one point seemed to win the support of Deal, a two-term governor who cannot run for a third time because of term limits. He later asked lawmakers to address concerns, such as whether guns should be allowed in on-campus daycare centers.

Lawmakers did not include those changes, partly because Jasperse said it was just too late in the process.

There’s also resistance to those exemptions. For one, Jasperse said someone with a license to carry can take a firearm into daycares all across the state. Why make a special exception for those on campus, he asked.

Jasperse also questioned how liberally a university might apply another suggested change to keep faculty and administrative office spaces off-limits.

“My simple question is, ‘Who are we talking about?’ We’re talking about good Georgians. They don’t harm other people’s children or their co-workers,” Jasperse said in an interview this week.

The bill sitting on Deal’s desk, he said, is meant to give those who qualify the opportunity to defend themselves.

Georgia is among a wave of states to consider campus carry after a string of mass shootings throughout the country. Supporters also point to recent robberies at Georgia State University’s on-campus library as examples of why permit-holders should be able to protect themselves.

But opponents, including Savannah mom Lindsey Free-Donovan, said the measure puts more Georgians in danger than it keeps safe.

“My child who is sitting next to that good Georgian doesn’t know if that’s a good Georgian,” said Free-Donovan, who leads the Georgia chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, an affiliate of Everytown for Gun Safety.

The mere presence of that gun, she said, discourages the kind of lively and open debate that is an integral part of the college of experience.

Free-Donovan, who said she owns a gun but does not have a license to carry, said her concerns do not stop there. She worries introducing firearms in a setting rife with academic and social pressure — not to mention alcohol — could compromise the safety of others.

She said it may scare off professors or students, including dual-enrollment high schoolers. She also questioned where students who live on campus will store their firearms while staying in their dorms.

The University System of Georgia and representatives of colleges and universities — including Georgia College and State University, and Dalton State College — have said they would prefer the current law to remain as is.

Cecil Staton, Valdosta State’s interim president, went a step further and called on the governor to veto the bill.

In a letter to Deal, which was posted on the university’s website, he said campus police are concerned about maintaining order “with so many unpredictable consequences possible.”

Those could include, he wrote, “accidental or negligent discharges or the addition of well-intentioned but untrained bystanders to any potentially volatile situation on the campus.”

If these concerns lead to a second controversial veto for the year, campus-carry supporters said they’ll be back next January — pushing for an even more expansive bill.

“You wouldn’t think that a Republican governor from Georgia would veto God and guns in the same session,” said Jerry Henry, executive director of Georgia Carry, which advocates for Second Amendment rights. “But he may very well do that.”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites.