While the Colorado state legislature unsuccessfully tried to ban concealed carry on college campuses in the Centennial state, Georgia lawmakers are busy doing the exact opposite.
On Friday, the Georgia State House of Representatives passed H.R. 29, the Georgia Campus Carry Act of 2013, which would permit concealed carry on college campuses in the state. The legislation also allows school administrators to be armed.
“It is cruel and immoral to deprive any individual’s right to defend his or her person, much less to create these free target venues for the disturbed,” State Rep. Charles Gregory (R-Kennesaw), the bill’s sponsor, told WXIA-TV, Atlanta’s NBC affiliate.
If the bill passes the state senate, Georgia would be the sixth state to allow concealed carry on college campuses, joining Colorado, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin.
“These laws just make people sitting ducks, and it is incomprehensible to me that we would try and use the government to try and strip somebody of their right to self-defense,” Gregory continued. “From a practical standpoint, if somebody was in that (Connecticut) school, say a principal had had a firearm, he probably could have saved many, many lives that day.”
Although some college administrators oppose legalizing concealed carry on campus, many students support the measure, noting that banning the guns isn’t going to prevent criminals from obtaining them.
“Disallowing us to have guns is not going to keep the criminals from having guns. All gun control is doing is disarming the victims and not the criminals,” Luke Crawford, a Kennesaw State University student and member of Students for Concealed Carry, told MyFoxAtlanta.
A similar bill, H.B. 28, would allow concealed carry in churches. That bill, however, is still in committee.
Both bills mandate that the gun owner must at least 21 years old and pass a criminal background check to legally carry a firearm.
