By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD – The Senate has passed a bill that would study campus carry of firearms on public campuses despite opposition, while the House voted down an attempt to resurrect the original bill allowing open carry on public colleges campuses.

An amendment would allow for faculty to carry lethal weapons on campus and allow students to have non-lethal weapons while a study is conducted on whether or not to allow for the carrying of lethal weapons by students.

Currently, the decision to allow students to carry firearms rests with public universities themselves and they do not allow it.

House Bill 1793-FN was opposed overwhelmingly by students, law enforcement and administrators who warned it could hurt enrollment and drive up tuition through higher insurance costs.

Supporters said the bill would make students safer and not be subject to the sorts of violence seen most recently at Brown University.

The bill would not extend to private schools, supporters said, though state Sen. Tara Reardon, D-Concord, argued the bill still allowed for it to extend to institutions that take public state funds.

“That’s not clear,” she said, and would likely need to be resolved by litigation if passed.

All Republicans voted for it, while all Democrats opposed. The vote was 14 to 8 with Sen. Denise Ricciardi, R-Bedford, having an excused absence. Sen. Dan Innis, R-Bradford, recused himself from voting because he is a professor of Marketing and Hospitality Management at the University of New Hampshire.

The amended bill now heads to the House.
The prime sponsor of the bill, Rep. Samuel Farrington, R-Rochester, tried in the House without success to add the original bill to Senate Bill 408, which would require insurance companies to cover the cost of adult prosthetics and had wide support.

The amendment was killed on a 148-189 vote.

Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, said the new version of the bill would be “extraordinarily damaging” to the institutions themselves and questioned what the definition of a faculty member was. Would it include those who are not U.S. citizens?

State Sen. William Gannon, R-Sandown, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the body to pass the bill as amended as “a balanced path forward.”

It protects access to non-lethal self-defense tools now, while ensuring that future consideration of campus carry is informed by data and review of safety and fiscal impacts, Gannon said.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, called the version of the bill which studies campus carry a good idea.
State Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, said the committee heard from the UNH student body president who showed a survey of students that 85 percent opposed the bill.

At a time when enrollment is struggling, she noted that the survey showed students would have been less likely to attend UNH if it was in place when they considered where to go to college.

She said “without a study committee we already heard testimony that for security infrastructure, insurance exposure, storage capacity and legal defense against the bill’s $10,000 minimum private right of action. That we don’t need to study. We got testimony for it.”

There was six hours or more of testimony on the bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee, mostly in opposition. She said study costs could come to more than $1 million and would come out of tuition.

Altschiller said to keep the question of campus firearms open leads to uncertainty and “uncertainty is not neutral.”

“Prospective students and their families make decisions well before this bill will take effect and the moment this study committee becomes a news story – and it will – parents making college visits next fall will be asking the same question our tour guides dread. A study committee hanging over New Hampshire’s public colleges is not a compromise. It is a slow-motion enrollment crisis.”

She noted suicide is a major issue for students and firearms are used in 90 percent of fatal suicide attempts “with no second chance.”

Altschiller added that New Hampshire took that seriously enough to put the suicide phone line 9-8-8 on the back of student identification cards.

“This bill would make that same student ID the key to a campus where guns are unrestricted….” she said, asking that the amendment fail and the bill be killed. Republicans called for a recess.

State Sen. Howard Pearl, R-Loudon, asked to vote down the committee amendment and allow for another amendment that would be better, but that effort failed.

After a recess, Sen. Gannon then offered an amendment for faculty that they be able to carry weapons.

“We also have a study committee because there are a million questions here,” Gannon said. For example, he asked if in a dorm, should a gun be locked. Other questions include trigger locks, insurance liability, kindergartens on campus, federal setback requirements, carry at a game, or in a locker.

There are numerous questions that need to be addressed in a meaningful study, he said in offering floor amendment 1882.

State Sen. Victoria Sullivan, R-Manchester, said second amendment rights should not be determined by who owns the land under a person’s feet.

The real conversation, she said, should be with administrators on why the culture created on campus is so dangerous.

Sen. Keith Murphy, R-Manchester, said he would be speaking against the amendment but holding his nose and voting for it. He talked about being defenseless against intruders when he was 20 years old and a student. He had a piece of wood. That changed his perspective from being ambiguous on the question.
Self-defense is an inherent right, he said. No government or agency can take that away.

“Guns stop murder,” he said. “We have been lucky in New Hampshire. But sometime, our luck will run out.”
As much as he said he liked the bill unamended, “this is the best that is possible today.”

State Sen. Howard Pearl, R-Loudon, said he agreed with Murphy. “Sometimes we have to take what we can get,” he said.

Altschiller pointed to the fact that you cannot carry a gun into a courtroom or even a doctor’s office and that Article 3 allows for “surrendering certain rights” for the safety and benefit of society.

“Firearms should not be something that you should have to have,” she said, noting that the focus should be on the perpetrator.

“Sometimes bad ideas come up through the legislature,” she said and this is one.

State Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, D-Portsmouth said this is a bad idea for public safety and law enforcement all opposed the original bill. “We should heed their advice,” she said.

Perkins Kwoka said the body should be more focused on measures that are of concern to constituents.

State Sen. Sue Prentiss, D-Lebanon, said communities are facing a very real crisis on emergency medical response. This bill moves the state in a very different direction, she said.

Our public colleges and universities already work well to create policies tailored to their campuses, Prentiss noted. This would remove local authority and replace it with a legislative mandate regardless of individual institutional needs.

She said she was also concerned about the message the bill sends to environments meant for learning, questioning and development.
Sen. Donovan Fenton, D-Keene, said there is no amount of polish that can make this bill better.
He said few bills have seen such backlash.

State Sen. Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton, noted the “unambiguous” language in the state constitution for concealed carry.
He said  shooters currently have “gun free zones” and that needs to be studied.

The bill is likely to go to a Committee of Conference before it proceeds to the governor.

Garry Rayno contributed to this story.