story from Talk Business & Politics, a content partner with The City Wire
Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, says despite party line differences over his controversial guns on college campuses legislation, he hopes to address enough concerns to win a swing vote to get the bill out of committee later in the session.
Appearing on Talk Business & Politics on Sunday, Collins told KATV’s Janelle Lilley that he wanted to “process” objections raised in a marathon meeting of the House Education Committee on Thursday.
“I haven’t thought yet what the next steps are. I want to take in all the learning I got,” said Collins, the sponsor of House Bill 1077. “As you mentioned, it was a two or three hour exchange, discussion. I want to process all that. What I would love to do is: any of the questions that people asked me, if I could make an adjustment to the bill to resolve those questions.”
The measure eliminates the opt-out provision of a bill Collins passed in 2013. University and college campus boards must now vote annually to allow or disallow employees who are concealed carry permit holders from bringing their guns on campuses. All public universities and colleges in the state voted to bar guns on campus.
But Collins is undeterred.
“I personally believe gun-free zones and places like that are the type that get targeted by some cold, calculating folks and if we were allowed to have concealed carry holders on campus, it would deter some of those attacks,” he said.
The House Education Committee is split with 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans. The vote Thursday on HB 1077 was divided among party lines.
“Once again, we have a pretty clear split in terms of party philosophy on issues like this. And while I respect each representative’s thoughtfulness, and I know they thought about this bill very hard – there were emotions involved in this,” Collins said. “One of the things you see in politics in a very, very large decisions – major things like how do we take care of our loved ones or big budget decisions – you’ll see that party philosophies can be very indicative of how people think.”