Georgia’s Republican governor vetoed Tuesday a campus carry bill broadly supported by his own party and easily passed by the state legislature that would have allowed college students to carry concealed guns on campus at the state’s public colleges and universities. Despite the bills support within his own party, there were signs Gov. Nathan Deal was considering sending the bill that would have allowed anyone 21 and older to carry a weapon on campus back to the legislature unsigned. The bill would have allowed guns in classrooms, but barred them from dorms, Greek housing, and athletic events.
Each of the 29 presidents of public institutions and their police chiefs all opposed the bill. “Long an opponent of the measure, Deal said in February that fears that campus carry would lead to a ‘Wild West scenario’ were overblown,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. “But shortly after the measure passed, Deal sent hand-written notes to House Speaker David Ralston and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle urging them to exempt on-campus child care facilities, faculty or administrative office space and disciplinary meetings in a separate measure.” They declined to reconsider the bill and Deal vetoed it.
The veto was the second time in a matter of weeks Gov. Deal, in his second and final term in office, vetoed a high-profile bill popular among his party. A little over a month ago, Deal vetoed a highly controversial “religious liberty” bill that would have permitted wide-ranging discrimination against the LGBTQ community in the state. This week Deal again countered his party and the powerful NRA gun lobby, so it is unsurprising that he went to painstaking lengths to explain his decision in his veto statement, “citing legal precedents and even harking back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1824, and their stance opposing guns on the University of Virginia campus,” the AP notes.
“If the intent of [this bill] is to increase safety of students on college campuses, it is highly questionable that such would be the result,” Deal said in the statement. “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.”
A number of other, largely Republican, state legislatures have disagreed with Deal’s thinking. According to the AP, nine states currently allow concealed handguns on campus: Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.
