House Education Committee
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Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
0:00
Before we get started this morning, of course, let me just clarify something. We have a special order for today, House Bill 1479. Mr. Collins is currently in another room, in another committee room, and we'll be here shortly. So we're going to go ahead and proceed with our committee. We're going to give him a little time, but normally a special order is set up for the committee, for the member to bring his bill at a certain time. I mean, I've given him a little leeway, but he
needs to, as a matter of fact, we may go get him here in a minute if he doesn't get here.
First, I'd like to turn the mic over to Vice Chair Roebuck, and she wants to make
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
0:39
an introduction. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, members and audience. I do have a special guest here today that no stranger to Arkansas. Dr. Dave Spence is here. He is president of the Southern Regional Education Board, gives us a lot of our research, and he's here today. will be on the agenda a little bit later, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Dr. Spence, would you stand, please, and be recognized?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Spence, it's good to have
you with us today. Take just a second. We have some students coming in to observe how we operate here at the Capitol, which could be
Speaker 15
1:25
good or could be bad. We have a group with
us, some students today with us from Caddo Hills.
They're the government class students with Teacher of Mystery Squires. Would you stand, please, ma'am? Glad to have you all with us today. And the guest of Representative Stewart. Stand up, kid. I hope today you see good government at work. Committee, I think Mr. Mock is here. Mr. Mock is here. Okay. Do
Speaker 5
2:16
we need to run? Mr. Mock, are you in the audience?
Speaker 19
2:28
We're going to go ahead and do you first if you want to. House Bill 1442 Committee. And
you should find a physical impact in your packet along with that bill. The record, please.
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
3:01
Larry Mock, Representative 26. You may proceed, Mr. Mock. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair, committee members. I'll be the first to admit this is not a perfect bill. The more I get into this research on kindergarten, and the more educated I get, it seems like. So I'm learning something new about this every day. I'll get to the point. The problem I have with the current law we have is an August 1st date has been set
for your fifth birthday to enter kindergarten. And I agree that we should have maturity when they go to kindergarten. These five-year-old children should have maturity. I don't disagree with that at all. But I want to add flexibility to this bill because we have students or children that were born after that date, such as August 2nd or August 3rd, who are ready to go to kindergarten.
They're ready. They're mentally ready, physically ready. And they're denied that chance. And since school starts like August 14th, well, I think we passed the bill from the 14th through the 26th as a window. the school is starting, at least have some kind of requirements or flexibility where these other children can get in. I'm open to amendment on this bill. Any suggestions at all? Like I said, I admit this is not a perfect bill. But I would like to say some flexibility on this.
I'll give you a good example. I have three children myself. My middle daughter, or my middle child, she's 16 now. She was born on August 24th. And compared to my other two children, she's a level above them on maturity and grades and everything else. The other two, they were following parameters of starting kindergarten when they're five years old by August 1st. But if she started school this year, she would not be allowed to do so. A good example, this may not be part of the subject, but all three of my children are taking the driving test.
She passed, she aced it the first time on a written test. I have to tell you that it took them two or three times to get it. So, and there it goes.
Speaker 28
5:23
She was born August 24th. So I'm just asking for some flexibility on this bill, and I'll
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
5:34
be opening any questions from the committee members. Committee, questions? Mr. Stewart. Yes, Mr. Mock. The bill that we have now, we worked on it over the last couple of sessions, and there were several reasons that we backed this up to August 1st.
And basically we've got all of the schools coordinated. The pre-kindergarten, the ABC schools are all in alignment now with the school start date. And what we found out last year, and I kind of opposed it recently, and my argument was kind of like yours, but I found out that no matter what date you set, somebody has a birthday the next day. And so no matter what date you pick, you're not going to make everybody happy. So what we did was align all three activities so that we would have a very consistent start date,
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
6:24
and it seemed to have worked pretty well. Yes, I understand that. The date's been changed twice, I
think, on that building. I think it started out September 15th and moved back to August 15th and August 1st. August 1st is fine, but as long as we have some other flexibility for children that are ready to go. I hate just holding our children back just because
Speaker 35
6:47
they were born on a certain date and they're
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
6:51
ready for kindergarten. That's the problem I have as we speak.
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
6:55
All right. Well, the current bill, you know, took that into consideration and we took into consideration all the requirements for all the other schools, too, the preschool, the ABC school, and we did that on a, like you said, we did do it on a stair-step method to do it in three deals, and August 1st will be the earliest date that we would ever move to. That's the end of the stepping, and I think it's working pretty well. Thank you.
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
7:25
Mr. Clemmer, you have a question? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mott, do you know if, well, I think I know the answer to this, but is preschool required? No, ma'am. But your bill does essentially say if you want to begin your child earlier, you had to, if we moved the state, preschool was going to be required. Is that correct?
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
7:54
No, ma'am. What I did was add the preschool in there if they didn't fall within the August 1st date.
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
8:00
I'm sorry. That's what I was trying to spit out. Yes, ma'am. So to go, if you wanted to
start August 1st, you would have had to have
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
8:10
had preschool. Yes, ma'am. 100 days. You had to be enrolled and attended 100 days of preschool for the immediate preceding school year. So
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
8:18
your position would be that there would be some demonstration of academic readiness? Yes, ma'am. Because of the preschool? Yes, ma'am. I'm just
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
8:26
trying to add flexibility. Okay. Thank you. Representative Hutchinson, do you have a question?
Speaker 46
8:33
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I think I have two.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
8:39
We told our children we wouldn't buy a television until they all could read. And our two older ones sat down and taught their younger brother to read. So he started kindergarten knowing how to read and basically just got in trouble the whole time because he was bored. So I understand there are situations where children might be ready for kindergarten.
Other than just attending a preschool, would you be willing to amend to have some requirement that they can count or something that the school might accept as a, because we can't judge every preschool, so would you consider having some guideline that the students, that the schools would know the student is ready for kindergarten? Yes, ma'am, I'd be very open to that. For any
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
9:34
aptitude, there would be required. I'd be very open to that.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
9:39
And my other question is, I noticed on the physical impact statement, and this somewhat has encouraged me to vote for your bill, It said the revenue impact is $11 million. Do we have that many students ready for kindergarten and they aren't allowed to attend that it would cost the state $11 million more? That would be quite a number of students coming into the state that the state thinks are ready and would meet your criteria and they aren't attending. So I was impressed that there would be that many ready.
So I would appreciate if you would give us a little bit more guidelines on when a student is ready by maybe checking and seeing what would be a good guideline if children can count or whatever would be a better indication on if they're ready
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
10:28
for kindergarten. I've just found out recently that I think there's a kindergarten readiness test, something like that.
They could just pass that, and they could just skip preschool and just take that before school started just to demonstrate to the teachers that they are ready for kindergarten.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
10:46
I think that's a great idea. So I'd appreciate it if you would pull your bill and get an amendment on it and
Speaker 46
10:53
then come back and see us. Would that be all right with you? Yes, ma'am.
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
11:04
Okay. Thank you. Representative Carnine, you have a question, I believe. Well, I was going to follow a similar line that Representative Hutchinson did with Representative Mock, and that is that I think what we're, again, being confronted with is that as we look at children,
I'm not sure it's just a kindergarten issue. I think it's a greater issue that many children both mature, both physically and mentally, at different times, and that trying to start things and end things on chronological age doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. And we've known this for a long time, and yet we've never successfully moved to a non-graded program in which kids can. In fact, I think they are smart enough. I don't think there's any question of it.
But because of maturity and other factors, many times are delayed and some are accelerated. And I've been an advocate of accelerating children rather than delaying them. So from that standpoint, I really compliment representing Mock of, again, confronting us with this same issue that I think we still need to address, and that is that allow children, we watch them come to school. Some children are small, and we wonder how in the world they could be ready for kindergarten or first grade.
and then others look like a fourth grader. And we consider this and think it's normal, but when it comes to maturity and intellect and experiences, we simply do not allow for that exception. So, again, I want to compliment Representative Mock. I do think the bill probably needs to be amended, and, again, I think this is a discussion we need to continue to have, and that is allow readiness to be the base rather than necessarily the age of a child chronologically.
Thank you, Mr. Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Carnot. Representative Klemmer, do
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
13:11
you have another question? Yes, sir. I think, well, there's a question here. First of all, do we allow, Representative Mark, do you, or if I could ask this question to Representative Roebuck or anyone else, do we still allow parents to request their kids to skip a grade? I know when my kids were in school, there were children that they may not have been allowed to skip kindergarten,
but if they went to kindergarten, I know we had one that skipped first grade. Do we still
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
13:43
allow that? Does anyone know? Well, we have Dr. Kimberlin Aldis. I'm sure he's smart enough to address that. If
Speaker 61
13:49
he was listening. And I can understand why he wouldn't be listening,
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
14:01
especially to me. Forgive me, ma'am. You're right, I wasn't. Heather and I were talking about how the calculations were done on the fiscal impact.
Speaker 67
14:08
Well, that was going to be my next question, so you
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
14:13
were just thinking ahead for me. Okay, what was your first question? My question was, do we still allow parents to request, and with some evidence, I'm sure, of academic ability, do we still allow parents to request their children to be able to skip a grade? Yes, ma'am. But we don't allow that for, but essentially we're saying we can't do it for kindergarten.
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
14:31
Yes, ma'am. Is that correct? Because that's what the law says. And in the others, we don't have a law that says that you move to first grade when you're six years old, et cetera, et cetera.
There's nothing in the statute. This has just been an issue that's been debated year, you know, session after session after session. It's that start. But, yes, we still allow, and that's a local decision that is made at the local level, whether students can move through the grades. But at kindergarten, the
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
15:00
law is very specific. Okay. But I do have a follow-up question, with your permission, Mr. Chair. Yes, ma'am. On the fiscal impact, and I appreciate them telling us how it was arrived at.
But if you started kids earlier, would they not? I mean, it might be an initial impact, but they would actually get out of the system a
Speaker 64
15:21
year sooner also. Yes, ma'am. Our initial fiscal impact is the worst-case scenario if you had
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
15:28
an even distribution of births over the 365 days, and you took the number of days that we're talking about changing here, and the fraction of that times the number we normally have of students in kindergarten
and we looked at what we're anticipating adequacy will be on foundation next year, we looked at what that majority or I guess the worst-case scenario would be, and that's about a little over $14 million. That's a one-time first-year cost because then they get into the system and we would anticipate.
Speaker 64
16:03
Our concern is we did not provide a budget with that number of students entering kindergarten in
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
16:11
the public school fund. I would suspect, and I, too, really appreciate Representative Mock's concern,
that it might be hard to start, obviously, right away, that we might have to do it. If we were to decide that we wanted to move this, we might have to phase this in or
something. I don't know. That would be another subject for
another day. But would the AEA be open to considering readiness as opposed to birth age? You mean the ADE?
Speaker 61
16:48
Sorry. I didn't mean to say ADE. I really meant to say ADE. I have clearly
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
16:56
not had enough coffee this morning. Would the, yes, would your
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
17:01
organization? Well, it's an agency, and it's one of your agencies in the state. So we have had these conversations years and years. I'll tell you my personal and my professional opinion about this is one of the things that is going to have to be debated eventually, in my opinion, is are we talking about a chronological start date or are we talking about readiness?
The ability for the state to develop and have a reliable, valid assessment of kindergarten readiness, we're not there. Can we get there? We possibly could. I think it would take some time and take a lot of energy. It's not that we don't have the energy. I don't know that we've got the time between now and the end of the session to do that. So, yes, in my personal and professional opinion, we really ought to start talking about readiness and not a chronological date. Because what we built in the culture in the United States is that you start kindergarten at age five,
and if you're not finished with high school at the age of 18, you're considered a failure. And it shouldn't be about chronological age. It should be about emotional, intellectual capacity and being at that level of being able to do those things. And we recognize those things and move children through an educational process based upon their ability to progress in their learning. We're not there. We're still in a culture of age-determining entry and, in some cases, actually leaving
because we let them leave at the age of 18, whether they have a diploma or
Speaker 61
18:35
not. I guess the essence of that question was you would not be opposed to looking
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
18:39
at. We're not opposed to looking at that. I think it would take a lot more time than we're going to have before the end of this session to do that. Right now, we are having to operate under what the law is, And I think there are some other educators out there who would like to have further discussion about the practicality of that and how do we do that and how would you set that up.
Representative Tim Summers
Unverified
19:01
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Summers, you had your hand up a minute ago. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. And regardless of this position of this, we have a witness who's traveled over 200 miles from the far reaches of northwest Arkansas, I'd like to give him the courtesy of comments, if possible. He will
have a – is he Mr. Monk with – is he someone with a – okay. If he's not with the person in the table, we will have a period in a minute for the audience to speak for or against this bill.
That would be fine. Thank you. And the only comment I'll make, Mr. Monk, I know the last time we changed the date, and I think we changed it in my past two sessions, each session it seemed like, but it's created – every time we change it, it creates a
problem in the school districts. having to rearrange teachers and move teachers around. But I think we also have Representative Hutchinson has
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
19:55
a question, I believe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess this is directed to Dr. Kimbrell again. He's gone.
Getting his jogging time in here. I need to
do more. Is it true that we have a kindergarten readiness test already available? We
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
20:16
have a kindergarten readiness to determine where each student is as we progress in their learning. I can't answer specific questions about that. I'm sorry, and I don't have the staff person here to answer that. We will get that information for you as to
Speaker 64
20:30
what that actually assesses and what it indicates. I would
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
20:35
appreciate if you did that and to work with Representative Mock on if that may be inserted or part of his amendment.
Speaker 87
20:41
We will be glad to work with him. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. And that
would be my suggestion, Representative Mark. Of course, it's your call, but I would like for you to pull the bill down. I think you should pull the bill down and get with Mr. Kimbrell and work with him on some – probably this session, you understand that probably. Yes, sir. But to give you some time, you'll be back, we presume, next session. So give you some time to work on it. Actually, we can refer it to an interim study if you want us to, to one of the subcommittees. And we have a subcommittee on, I'll thank Mrs. Hobbs, chair of that subcommittee,
and early child care and early childhood education. I believe she'd be loved to
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
21:17
work on this with you and Dr. Kimbrell. Okay. Okay. And without objection, we'll let
you pull that bill down if you request. Yes, I request to pull the bill down for amendment. Thank you. Thank you for coming
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
21:40
today. Thank you. I'm sorry, Ms. Summers, I forgot. I've just been reminded.
Paul Calvert is in the audience.
Tim? Who? Would you like
to go to the end of the table? Since you've come the long way, he's going to pull it
Speaker 108
22:03
down. So... We'll wait. Okay. And you can
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
22:07
get with Dr. Kimbrell if you have some questions or input. Thank you.
Committee, we're going to look real quickly at the transfer bill Representative Roebuck
has, and it's 1772. And then we'll get to our special order. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment. I
believe they're passing that out at this present time.
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
23:03
Mr. Chair, it's my bill, my amendment. I move adoption. All those
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
23:08
in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Like a sign? I believe the ayes have it. You may proceed, Ms. Roebuck. Thank you,
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
23:15
Mr. Chair. With permission of the chair, I would like to invite Dr. Dave Spence, President of Southern Regional Education Board, to join me at the table. Dr. Spence, will you
identify yourself the record there, and then you may proceed. Yes, Mr. Chair. I'm David Spence.
Speaker 125
23:34
David Spence, I am President of the Southern Regional Education
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
23:41
Board. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members. Gives me great pleasure to bring you today House
Bill 1772, and I said it's my bill, my amendment. It's really not my bill. There are lots of people in this room that have helped with this over the last, really, two years. We began to talk after Representative Mike Burris, my colleague, a former member of the
House, passed the Roger Phillips transfer bill two years ago, and we began to talk about what we could do to make transfer policy even better. So over the course of the last two years, there have been many, many stakeholders, if I asked them to stand, it would probably be half the room, that have met and talked and continue to even talk as late as yesterday. That's why you have an amendment. But I believe today that what we bring you, the bill with the amendment, hours and hours of work, strengthens
what we did two years ago. I just talked this morning with Representative Mike Burris. I had hoped that he could be here, but he's in Austin with his grandchildren, and that takes priority for him these days. So we want to thank him for what he did for us, and I I would be remiss if I did not do that because he was the one that worked on this the entire time that he was in the legislature. But what you see before you today, members, addresses so many of our problems on not only degree completion but certificate completion and education at the postsecondary level.
Fifty-two percent of jobs in Arkansas will require some postsecondary training beyond high school by the year 2018. And unless we have systemic change and aggressive change, Arkansas will continue to rank ninth in the nation in the percentage of jobs for high school dropouts, we rank second in the nation for percentage of jobs for high school graduates, and we rank forty-seventh in the nation for the percentage of jobs for college graduates, and we rank fifty-first in the
nation for percentage of jobs for people with graduate degrees. So why do we want to do this and why do we want to strengthen our transfer system? SREB has studied this issue for many years and we know that there are three major reasons that we want to have a more effective transfer system. It's to provide a clearer, shorter path to degree completion, certificate completion for transfer students to reduce time to and cost of that degree and certificate and to
save state funding associated with excess credit hours taken by students. And that comes right out of SREB's effective transfer policy documents. And Dr. Spence, I would like, with your permission,
Mr. Chair, to make some comments. That will be appropriate.
Speaker 125
26:43
Thank you, Representative Roebuck. Mr. Chair, committee members, it is
Speaker 124
26:47
a beautiful day in Arkansas, and it's a beautiful day for me because at my age, I've pretty much given up another state developing and adopting
this kind of very important policy. Your governor has set a very ambitious goal and an important goal to increase the numbers of Arkansas residents with degrees and certificates. In fact, I think it's like double between now and 2025. This is a good goal, and the effectiveness with which students transfer, particularly from a community college to a senior, public senior university, plays a critical role.
It will play a critical role in meeting this ambitious goal. Across the country, I have to tell you, in just about every state, transfer students face obstacles in earning a degree that students who begin at a senior university simply don't face. In all but a few states, and I've been in four of them with the universities, in all but a few states, we simply, in higher education, have accepted that these difficulties in transfer,
the obstacles in transfer, are just part of the dislocation. It's just part. Transfer is going to be messy, and there's nothing we can do about it. If you're going to transfer, you're going to lose some hours. Well, with this economy and with all these goals that you have and they're good goals, states can no longer afford to do that. We have to have a perfect process for helping students transfer. This bill, Representative Roebuck, as you know I feel this way, will address this key
challenge. And if you adopt this legislation, you will be one of five or six states, depending on how I count, that will have this kind of comprehensive policy. It will allow students to finish, and the goal should be finish in the same hours, transfer students finishing in the same hours as a student who begins in a university. That should be the goal. That's how you track this. Two, the path will be straightened for transfer students, helping them to get degrees and
to meet the governor's goal for more degrees and certificates. And third, and this is very important in these times, in so doing, you'll help students finish, transfer students finish in fewer hours, fewer hours, and the universities and community colleges can use those fewer hours and take the cost saved to fund the many additional students that your higher ed system is going to have to take in if you have any chance to meet this goal.
I am so proud that Arkansas is one of the few states in our region as well that is considering putting this policy in place. And finally, Representative Roebuck, I do have to applaud the higher ed people in here. I've talked to some of them. Once again, I never thought I'd see the day, but the cooperation has been remarkable, and I think there's a sense that in these times and to meet this goal, we all have to come together and use state resources more effectively and help the students.
This bill has all the critical components that we think is needed and including the critical role that faculty need to play in putting this kind of curriculum together. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Spence. Thank you
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
30:34
for being with us. Committee, Repton Roebuck, are you through with your close for your bill? Yes, sir. We'll take questions. Okay. Committee questions. Repton Klemmer. I'm a co-sponsor of this, but I
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
30:49
still have a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Roebuck, would you clarify, just so I can be clear in my communication when I ask about this, on page 2, lines 31 through 36, where it says a discipline-specific course required for a baccalaureate degree program, where it says, and the student has not completed a course at the two-year public institution that's comparable to which could you just clarify that for me direct me
one more I'm sorry page I'm
sorry I said page two it's page four I'm sorry 31 through
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
31:36
36 that's in the current Roger Phillips transfer that's the way that's currently written Representative Klemmer, so that you've got a course that is specific to that discipline or that major, and it's required, and if the student has not completed that, so it talks about the comparable course.
So that was in the original legislation. Okay, we'll
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
32:02
just chat about that. I should have noticed
that, but we'll chat about that later. Thank you. Representative Carnine, do you have a question?
Speaker 138
32:13
I have a motion at the proper time. Thank you,
Speaker 136
32:16
sir. Any additional questions from the committee? Representative Clemmer. Do
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
32:21
we have a timeline for implementation? And I apologize.
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
32:30
I don't have the bill memorized. Excuse me. On page 7, state minimum core curriculum fully implemented July 1, 2012. there may be another date does that
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
32:49
include the all the common course numbering when
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
32:53
you get yes and I wanted to say that and into publicly thank representative car nine for his help on that section when you go to
Speaker 141
33:03
page Is there another date? I'm sorry.
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
33:11
Okay, yes, I'm sorry. The last page, July 1, 2013, Representative Clemmer. Thank you. Any other
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
33:30
questions, committee? Seeing none, we'll go to the audience.
Anyone want to speak for or against this bill? A little conversation near
the table down here. I apologize, Mr. Chair, we were clarifying. I understand he's a former legislator, you know, no manners.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
34:04
He was doing what I asked him to do, please excuse his behavior. That's unusual. Seeing no other comments or questions for the audience, Representative Carnine, do you have a motion? Yes,
Speaker 19
34:18
I have a do pass as amended. That's correct. Committee? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed like signed. I believe the ayes have
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
34:25
it. Representative Roebuck, you passed your bill, a very good bill. I know a lot of hard work and a lot of
people involved, and thank you very much.
Speaker 151
34:35
Thank you, and thank you, you stakeholders in the audience. I appreciate
you. Committee, at this time, we will go back to our special order, House Bill 1479. Representative Collins,
if you will come to the end of the table and identify yourself for the
Charlie Collins
Unverified
34:58
record, we will proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Charlie Collins, a representative from District 89, and I really appreciate you setting the special order
and the opportunity to discuss this important bill with the committee and so many folks that are here. Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio on February 6, 2011. Campus shooting, one dead, 11 wounded. Mid-Atlantic Christian University, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, October 3, 2010, campus shooting, one dead.
2008, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, campus shooting, two dead. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, February 14, 2008, six dead. And of course, who could forget Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, April 16, 2007, 32 dead. We've got a packed house here today, but over the last four years, there are 58 people fewer
that could attend this meeting because since 2007, there have been at least 17 campus shootings with over fifty eight people killed when i came to the legislature one of the first things that some of the senior legislators told me is before you go to work on a bill understand what the problem is that you're trying to fix ladies and gentlemen committee we do have a problem
in this bill while not a panacea while not a complete fix, will help us protect the lives of our children because 58 people in the last four years, three to four incidents per year, is a problem that's just not going away on its own. At the same time, we need to be careful, we need to be reasonable, and we need to be measured.
As you may be reading in the news, other states are dealing with this same problem virtually as we speak. The House committee in Oklahoma just yesterday passed out a bill that's fairly similar to the bill you're considering today. In Texas, there's a bill that's passed out of their House committee that is substantially different than the bill we're talking about today. And the reason the bill is different is because in Arkansas, people have spoken and we've listened.
I talked about campus carry bill throughout my campaign and got a lot of input. And while obviously there are a lot of folks in favor of gun owner rights, and we heard a lot from those folks, we also heard from concerned parents. We also heard from the university. And there was a unanimous core issue, core concern, core fear with the campus carry legislation that I talked about during the campaign.
And that fear could be summed up in one phrase. Charlie, are you going to make the cure worse than the disease? That's a phrase I heard when I was selling shampoo and we were selling dandruff shampoo. and we always had to figure out a way so that people didn't feel that the dandruff shampoo medicine was going to make their hair worse and they'd just as soon have the dandruff. Maybe we can live with all these murders. Maybe we just ought to do that and just live with them. Because if we move forward with a campus carry provision
and somehow irresponsible 18-year-old boys who don't have concealed carry permits, who haven't been trained, who've never been fingerprinted, who've never had the background checks, who may be drunk and obnoxious and all the other things that young college boys do, maybe those kids will get a hold of guns in dormitories and other places on campus and create more of a problem than we've already got. So we listened. We listened. And
Representative Charlie Collins
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that's why this bill will prevent that from happening, as well as any legislation can.
Charlie Collins
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39:26
And the way we do that is by restricting the concealed carry on college campus to those faculty and staff members only who, of course, have our concealed carry license or one that the state recognizes. So there's two key elements of qualification restricted through this bill. Number one, you must have a concealed carry permit.
And I've got a professor who's going to talk a little bit more about the requirements, but suffice it to say, for those that have gone through it, there is a training program, there's an education program, there's fingerprinting, there's background checks, you must be 21, you cannot have been in for alcohol rehab, drug rehab, jail time, and all of these other restrictions. That program is run by our state police director, Winn Phillips. Many of you know him. And I think we've got a great program.
I was fortunate to just go through the training and some of those other elements, so I feel like I've got a current sense of the program myself, and I feel very good about it. If someone were to think, well, perhaps that program ought to be even more stringent, I'd be happy to talk to them about some separate legislation dealing with Arkansas's concealed carry process. But frankly, I think it's awesome, and there are a lot of statistics nationwide that talk about how responsible those concealed carry holders are.
So step one, the concealed carry permit, I don't think, folks, that today may be in a restaurant on Dixon Street when they walk onto the campus at U of A a few blocks away all of a sudden become dangerous. But we listened. We listened to the concerns of parents with children at school and grandparents with children school and university administrators. I'm getting ready to send my oldest daughter to the University of Arkansas in the fall. She's a senior today. I've got a junior. She's getting ready to go to college in two years, and I've got two sophomore boys. So I'm getting ready
to eat my own cooking. I believe this will help, and it will help them. The second restriction is you must work for the university where you will carry. What if there's somebody who is a student and then works part-time in the lunchroom? Nope. Don't qualify. If you're a full-time student, you can do anything else. It doesn't matter. You're a student. You do not qualify to carry a concealed handgun on the campus. Well, what if somebody is a professor
at UALR and then they go to a different college? Nope. Doesn't qualify. You have to be a professor or another faculty member or another employee of the university where you are. We have made this as restricted as possible because if we make a little and we see some successes and we can get comfortable that offering our students and the other people on our college campuses some protection and it works and we say, gosh, we need more of
this, great. We can come back later and make more of it. But for now, this bill is very restrictive versus lots of other legislation you see out there. So when you think campus carry, you need to think Arkansas campus carry. And that means concealed carry license plus full-time faculty, staff at the university where you are. Okay. Let's talk for just a moment about the difference between how this bill would treat public versus private colleges and universities.
I'm a strong private property rights person. I'm sure all of you are as well. And just as our concealed carry laws address the question of private property and being able to post signs and other things to keep non-carry for private property, this bill still allows that. So for all the private colleges and universities, if they don't feel comfortable with this, they can simply post the non-carry and they can continue on as they are. For public universities, it's different.
And the reason is because now we're talking about government, and we're talking about government infringing upon the rights of our faculty and staff at universities to be able to follow through on this law. So public universities would not be able to post the signs to prevent concealed carry for faculty and staff on their grounds. I mentioned that we try to listen and eliminate the concerns of those who were concerned. Can we eliminate them all? Of course not.
It's never going to happen. We're never going to agree 100%. And there's no such thing as perfect safety. It doesn't exist. The option does not exist. But when you ask someone from the University of Arkansas, have we taken care of your number one concern, your number one fear, I think they'll agree that this bill does that. What about law enforcement? The state police have had a chance to look through this. I asked
Wynn and Lieutenant Colonel Knuckle to take a look at this bill, and they came back to me, and the
Representative Charlie Collins
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44:50
note I got said regarding HB 1479, we have no problem if the
Charlie Collins
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44:57
legislature wishes to change the prohibited places in the concealed hand carry license law. What about the University of Arkansas Police? In the newspaper, they were quoted throughout the campaign as saying they will enforce whatever laws the legislature passes. So the reality is this is for us to decide
do we want to take a step to help protect our children and others on college campuses campuses, and universities, can we take this step in a safe, responsible manner with concealed carry licenses, plus only allowing those that are faculty and staff at the universities to carry? There's a specific restriction in here that says there's no storing a handgun in a dorm room. So if somebody says, well, I work at the university in the cafeteria, and somehow I've got a room in the
dorm room, therefore I'm going to have a gun there, and if a drunk 18-year-old gets a hold of it, that, you know, we're going to have a problem that way, this bill tries to address that too. What I'd like to do next is bring up Professor Steinbach. He's going to talk about a couple of the other aspects, and then we can take questions, Mr. Chairman, or if somebody's got questions on their mind now, of course, we're happy to take them along the way. Professor Steinbach? Sir, that'll be
fine. Ms. Collins, identify yourself to the record, please. MR. Excuse me. My name
Speaker 164
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is Robert Steinbuck. I'm a professor of law at the University
of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law. MR. You may proceed, sir. MR. Thank you very much, sir. Let me just state the required disclaimer that as all faculty appearing before the legislature, I'm not necessarily speaking on behalf of the school, I am speaking pursuant to the university obligation to provide such service to the legislature along with my civic duty to do the same.
Mr. Collins' bill on school safety is indeed a very modest bill, a very limited bill. It makes small changes to the existing legal landscape to close a loophole in the existing law. As you know, and as was discussed by Representative Collins, the current law to carry concealed weapons is quite rigorous. It requires coursework. It requires an examination.
It requires fingerprinting. It requires a demonstrated proficiency in the use of firearms. It prohibits guns to drug addicts. It prohibits guns to felons. It prohibits guns to
Speaker 166
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the mentally insane. None of this changes with
Speaker 164
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Mr. Collins' bill. All of these rigorous requirements remain fully in place.
Mr. Collins' bill makes one small adjustment to close an existing loophole. It says, if you have a concealed carry license pursuant to Arkansas law, you may carry your firearm if you are an educator or staff member at a university to that university. That's the only change that it makes. Unfortunately, as Mr. Collins highlighted, there have been a number of significant events
and the press in recent years regarding school shootings. There was a shooting at a law school, the Appalachian Law School, which was equally as tragic as the other examples that Representative Collins provided. Representative Collins' proposal is interesting, as I mentioned, in its limited nature. Texas and Utah have considered similar bills. Utah has passed a bill, but both of those bills permitted students to carry firearms
as well. As we know, Representative Collins' bill does no such thing. The practical effect of his bill would be quite modest as well. There are currently very few academics with carry license. There will be very few academics with carry license, but those who have it and want to to carry on campus, if this bill is enacted, will be permitted to do so. Of course, these are amongst our most educated people and our most law-abiding citizens.
So if we worry about people carrying guns, these are not the ones to worry about. We know that firearms provide some deterrence, but to be candid, we also know that firearms are dangerous. And so the difficulty that we always face is balancing these two issues.
How do we create more safety, not less safety? You've heard Representative Collins speak on this issue already. He did not want the solution to be more problematic than the problem itself. But currently, we have a situation in which those who would like to commit gun crimes know there is an open haven in which public citizens may not carry. And that open haven is college campuses that house our most dear children.
And so for this reason, Mr. Collins proposes this modest change. In sum, this bill makes no changes in terms of who can carry a firearm. It in no way makes guns more available to anyone. The bill allows our most educated citizens and our most highly law-compliant citizens
who already have carry license to carry those firearms at work. The bill ultimately will result in only modest changes in behavior in terms of who will be carrying and who won't be, and it closes a loophole in the current law, which will make our education system better. I believe this and I know that there are other educators, many, who believe this as well. But ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, these are your schools.
I work at a public institution. I work for you and the citizens of Arkansas. Don't take my word on faith, listen to what I have to say. Don't take administrators' words on faith, listen to what they have to say and you make Make the decision what you want to happen at your schools. I'm available for any questions if you have
any. Thank you, sir. I guess I have several.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
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52:30
Let me ask just a couple of things and we'll go to the committee. And either one can respond, Mr. Collins or Mr. Steinbuck. Steinbuck, is that right? Is that correct?
Speaker 19
52:39
Yes, sir. Thank you. Now, any staff member, is it any staff member that can have this concealed carry on campus? Yes, Mr.
Representative Charlie Collins
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Chairman. Full-time or part-time? Full-time, except for faculty, a nine-month appointment will count as full-time. So if
you've got an adjunct faculty that's teaching three hours on that campus, he can carry? That's not full-time.
Speaker 19
53:01
That's not full-time, sir. Okay, it's got to be full-time faculty. Yes, sir. But
Representative Charlie Collins
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53:07
other than that, maintenance staff? Maintenance staff would be full-time staff, yes. The
Representative Donna Hutchinson
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53:14
other thing, you know, a lot of conversation about the concealed weapons course, and I know there's at least two people at this table that have those, or maybe three, maybe four. And I have done that, but there's not but one person in this room that I think I would trust with a handgun in this room today.
And I'm not going to call his name, but he's – I guess the reason I say that is I know concealed permit, of course, is good. But I have not shot my pistol in over a year. And I'm afraid that –
anyway, we'll get in that conversation later. But let's go to the committee and see
Representative Randy Stewart
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53:57
what questions – Mr. Stewart, I believe I saw your hand first. Yes, thank you. The first question I
Speaker 164
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have from Mr. Steinbuck is which loophole are we closing exactly? The loophole that exempts out from the carry permit the area of schools and universities for carrying.
Representative Randy Stewart
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54:13
Okay. We have 100,000 people who have that permit. I have one, and I've taught this class for 15 years. I'm an instructor. So under this bill, if I were to leave here today and drive to Henderson State University on my way home, could
Speaker 164
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I park on that campus with a gun in my car? Well, you raise a good point, which is perhaps it doesn't close the loophole fully, right? It closes the loophole only for those who are full-time employees of the university. And as Representative Collins pointed out earlier, he is making the most modest incremental change that he can conceive of.
So if it's successful, perhaps the next step might be, and it's not for me to say, it's for all of you to say, to extend it to someone like you. But at this point, you're right. This is perhaps a
Representative Randy Stewart
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55:05
partial close of that loophole. This would have no effect on you, sir. Right. Why not? Okay. But my question is, I think you talked about very few academics have the permit. What about the cooks, the groundkeepers, the lawnmowers, the carpenters, those other staff members?
You do know that this will allow them to have a
Representative Charlie Collins
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55:26
gun, too? You get a job doing one of those jobs, sir, then
Representative Randy Stewart
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55:29
you could carry on the college campus. No, but the people that do have those jobs now, I'm just talking about his point that very few
Speaker 164
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academics have it, but you could have several employees who have that. Right, but if you take the relevant universe of people who work at a university, the biggest group is going to be the educators. So even if the rest of the employees mimic the regular population, educators tend to
carry guns less, not more, than the regular population. So as comparison to the ordinary population, you'll likely have fewer carry permits actually implemented on campus.
Representative Randy Stewart
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56:05
Well, my point is that I think there's probably more employees on a campus than academics. Your support staff is usually larger than your number of teachers. But then does this bill allow the college, any public university, any say-so on setting
up any criteria of their staff members who are qualified to carry or are a licensed carrier? No, this
Representative Charlie Collins
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56:31
bill does not add any additional training requirements. Are they going to do
Representative Randy Stewart
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56:35
anything at all to have any control over and any knowledge over who is carrying a weapon with a permit on their campus? There is
Charlie Collins
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56:47
a list of all concealed carry holders. I believe that is public information, if I'm not mistaken. So if somebody wanted to get a list of concealed carry holders that work at the university,
my hypothesis is you could probably go online and do a cross-check between employees of your institution and concealed carry holders, as I believe those names are listed. But that's all we've got in there at
Representative Charlie Collins
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57:09
this time. But you do allow that
Representative Randy Stewart
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57:12
prohibition for a private university. For a
Charlie Collins
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57:14
private university, they would be able to, in compliance with the concealed carry law put up signs that say you cannot carry here even if you are staff and faculty. And why is that different? I mean, because
Representative Randy Stewart
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57:25
I'm trying to figure out a way where I can do it, but you're saying that
I can't do it because my university can only allow staff and not prohibit anybody. So right now, the prohibition list are 19 different prohibition categories. Eighteen of them are governmental agencies. Everything that is there is a governmental agency except churches. Colleges and universities fall under one of those. When you remove that sign from that university, did you realize that you have opened it up so I can carry my gun on campus?
Under this bill? Yes. If you take the prohibition out that's in 306.19, right now what prohibits me from taking it on campus is that sign on campus. This bill takes that sign down. So now I am not prohibited from taking my gun on campus. My
Speaker 164
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understanding of the current law is regardless of sign, you're not permitted to carry on campus. No, it says
Representative Randy Stewart
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58:31
into a campus building. It doesn't say onto the campus itself.
Representative Charlie Collins
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58:37
Yes, sir. You're down at a very minute element here, and this talks about buildings.
Charlie Collins
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58:43
It does not address the issue of parking lots or other campus grounds. I did not want to get into messing with or dealing with the subject you're describing, which is, you know, how would one sort out buildings versus campus grounds? So the language in this bill is designed not to affect that issue you're describing, which some people say you're really not supposed to have it, and others say that, well, maybe
Representative Randy Stewart
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59:11
you can go in the parking line and park there. But would you agree that your bill takes away the
university's right to put a sign up that prohibits the carrying of a concealed handgun on their campus? No, it
does not do that. Does it say they cannot, any place with the exception of a college, community college, or university campus building or event, they can exercise control over the location by placing the sign?
So you've taken their ability to post
Charlie Collins
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59:46
a sign. Let's do this. First of all, I'm more than happy if the reality of the words is that we need to amend something like that. If we want to make an amendment like that, we can talk to what that looks like. I know if we take private universities, for example, private universities are allowed to disallow the carrying of a concealed weapon into the college's buildings, you know, with a sign, and that's the part that this thing went undue. And if for public colleges, your concern is that today people can carry on campus if there's
not a sign-up, if there's not a sign-up, and that this
Representative Randy Stewart
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1:00:22
bill eliminates their ability to carry on campus today now it opens it up if you take away their ability to post a sign the knock
then i could take that down on so you're open it up to just more than the staff you'll put up to any last and holder so what you're
Charlie Collins
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1:00:49
what you're what you're you're saying is right now any college
that does not have a no handgun sign that you or I could, if we had our concealed carry permit, you or I could drive on the campus,
Representative Charlie Collins
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1:00:59
walk around on campus as long as we had a concealed carry permit and carry the permit or carry the weapon?
That's what the law says now, yes. Our interpretation of that is different than yours, but we'd be glad to work on that with you. I'm
Representative Randy Stewart
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1:01:20
just making sure that you're going to achieve what you're attempting to achieve.
And you're trying to do a very narrow allowance, only staff members, anybody working at the university, but I'm not sure that the bill is clear on what you are doing. In other words, sir, what I'd
Charlie Collins
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1:01:37
be happy to do is separately work through with you to make sure that while we're making the law more expansive for faculty and staff, to make sure that we don't also make it less restrictive somewhere else. And I'd be happy to make sure that we do not make it less restrictive. I'm in favor of making it less restrictive.
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
1:01:57
Right now, one of the problems I have, and I have a large district, seven high school districts. A lot of my teachers drive back and forth to classes to get their master's, et cetera. And I've taught this class for 15 years, so I've got several alumni in my class. And they come to me and say, you know, right now I drive 50 miles to a night class, but I cannot take my gun onto the school campus because of the prohibition.
So we've got a wide problem there, and I want to make sure that we're addressing, that you're achieving what you're wanting to achieve. But at the same time, if we could make it a little bit more explicit that a concealed handgun person could have a gun on campus, then I'd be all for it. You know, students, you talk about students. Most students can't have one anyway. Why? Because they're not 21. Very good. So we're talking about, but even in my case, you know, as I explained today,
if I drive down to Henderson, I can't stop there with my gun in my car, okay? But under your bill, well, I still couldn't because I'm not an employee. But the thing is, if you've got a dual employee, a person, we have those that teaches at Ouachita and they teach at Henderson. On one campus, they'll be able to carry, and the other one they could potentially not be able to carry because you have given that right to the private institution. And I'm not sure that we need to give them any other right than we give to the public institution.
I don't want to give them the right to
Representative Charlie Collins
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1:03:39
prohibit it. You don't want to give the private institutions the
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
1:03:42
right to prohibit it. Right. Unless you're going to do it for both of them. You know, why should you give one institution
Representative Charlie Collins
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1:03:49
the right and not the other one? The reasoning for me, sir, is
Charlie Collins
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1:03:53
private property rights trump. If someone comes into your house, as you know, you must let them know if you're carrying. And if they ask you not to carry in their home, then you need to respect that. And I would do the same thing with private college and the owners of the college.
and that's the reason. When it comes to public, now we're talking about something very different in my view because now we're talking about the government infringing on our liberties and our Second Amendment rights, and that's different. And when we do that, we need to be extraordinarily careful, and that's why this bill is designed to expand those Second Amendment rights extraordinarily carefully and then do it with insistence on the public campuses, but acknowledged for private property those owners would be able to put up the no-carry
Representative Randy Stewart
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1:04:43
signs. Okay. So you're saying the people who control the grounds of a public university didn't have the same right to exercise the authority over that building
or the physical location as a private university? I mean, you know,
Representative Charlie Collins
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1:05:02
the chancellors, the deans, or et cetera, president of the college. I'm saying that that responsibility falls
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:05:08
on us as elected legislators of the people because those liberties are entrusted to, protection of those liberties is entrusted to us as representative of the people
and we cannot delegate that, in my view, to administrators. Okay. Well, I would
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
1:05:25
like to, you know, discuss with you the one part there where you're taking away the college's rights, to post a sign, and I think you do that under 309. MR. Sir, if I just
Speaker 209
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may. MR. 306. I'm sorry. MR. If I may make
Speaker 164
1:05:41
two very quick comments. My understanding of the current law is slightly different than yours, but I concede that I could be wrong.
But in any event, I think you have already discussed the proper course, which is to discuss it and make sure that you both are on the same page. In any event, what Representative Collins seeks to do with this bill certainly is consistent with your broader, strikes me as consistent with your broader goals, albeit perhaps not as expansive as what you would like to see. I'd also just like to briefly comment on the distinction between the private and the
public and whether you legislate regarding the private. Similarly, certainly the legislation regarding the public is consistent with the views that that I understand you to have based on our discussion here, and that it is your role and it's the people's role to decide what goes on on public campuses because those schools are not owned by faculty members like me. Those schools are not owned by administrators. Those schools are owned by you and the citizens of Arkansas, of which I am one, but just one.
Okay, I've got several people signed up for questions, but I guess one
Speaker 19
1:07:01
question that I had a while ago I did not ask. Mr. Collins, could the University of Arkansas at the present time actually have their faculty or staff trained through law enforcement agencies and be able to carry their gun on the campus at
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:07:20
that time? MR. What my understanding, Mr. Chairman, is this bill deals with the concealed carry
laws. There are separate laws, as I understand it, that have to do with law enforcement, and, of course, the University of Arkansas has law enforcement folks on their campus as well as they are under other jurisdictions. So how they would handle law enforcement things would be through one path of decisions. This is simply concealed carry. MR. I understand, but
if they wanted additional security, they could have their staff go through training and actually carry a concealed permit weapon on their campus.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:07:54
You mean today? Today, yes. No, sir.
I do not believe they could. They were not going through the same training that their security staff goes through? Oh, through law? Whatever
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:08:04
the process is for law enforcement, if they wanted to hire additional police officers or something like that, I'm sure they could. No,
I'm talking about faculty now. If they're faculty on their own or go through training, they
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:08:14
could carry on that campus. Is that correct? I'm not aware of a venue for that unless they somehow were to become a law enforcement person or a security guard, and then whatever the laws and rules are affecting law enforcement would apply in
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:08:25
that case, but not as a civilian through the concealed carry process.
All right. Thank you. Mr. Roebuck, you had
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
1:08:33
a question, I believe. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Collins, when you talk about your definition of staff member, does that include employees that are working for private vendors that are on our campuses such as the outsourcing that's done to bookstores, cafeterias, even some of our campuses might outsource their grounds to a private entity.
So under your definition, is it not true that those employees would be employed by the university, college, or community college full-time? No,
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:09:10
ma'am. Those are not employees of the university. Why not? Because
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:09:17
the words here are quite clear. is not enrolled as a full-time student at the University College or Community College and is either employed by the University College or Community College full-time or is on a nine-month appointment at the University College or Community College as a faculty member.
There's no provision in here for vendors or outsource people to claim employment by the University or College. We've made it as restrictive as possible so that we could move forward here to protect our children and grandchildren without taking undue risk, and while down the road, I think what you're describing actually could be a very reasonable, expansive measure that could be put into the law, what I want to do first is demonstrate for us the success of moving
forward, because remember, a core element of the way this bill protects our children is its deterrent effect. And if the crazies and the nutjobs and the killers are sitting in their garages planning the death of our children for their own aggrandizement and glorification, they're thinking to themselves, where can I be a hero? Where can I murder the most? Where can I be the safest? And just the knowledge that even one person, one professor,
have a gun could be enough to deter one of these crazies from doing their horrible deeds on a college campus and instead think about perhaps some other course of action. So, Representative Collins, the
Speaker 61
1:10:53
answer to my question is no. Yes, ma'am. The answer
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
1:10:59
is no. But to me, and I'm sorry, I'm reading this, if I'm employed by one of those vendors because you do not exclude me, I think there is a great line there that some of those employees may consider themselves to be covered. My next question has to do
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:11:17
Well, we ought to be able to make whatever language you need to make it clear that is a full-time,
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:11:23
is either employed by the university college or community college full-timers on a nine-month appointment. I don't know how to make that any clearer, but
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
1:11:30
if you do, I'm with you on changing the words. Well, I think what you said in your answer, some of it, you said that you are going to exclude vendors or employees of vendors. I don't know how you would do that in your language, but I got the answer to my question. Thank you. The other has to do with where the handguns can be stored. So you're saying to us that the storage of a handgun, you cannot
store it in a student dormitory or a residence hall, but you could have it stored in your
Speaker 218
1:12:01
office. Yes, you could have a handgun in your office. The
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:12:05
reason I specifically put in there no storage in a dormitory or residence hall is because it gets back to the number one concern expressed to me throughout the discussion of this from both the universities and parents of college students and others in the community. And that is a concern that particularly young, particularly male, and particularly untrained
and unconcealed carry license holder individuals, especially if they were drunk or something like that, might get a hold of weapons. And the most likely potential place for that to happen, for something to fall through the cracks on this bill, would be, for example, for a faculty member or another employee to somehow be living in a dorm room, and because they are allowed to carry, somehow say, okay, I can then keep it in the dorm room. So there's an explicit prohibition of that to protect our young people. MS.
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
1:12:55
And so the answer to that is we could see handguns stored in offices.
MR. Yes. MS. uh... the lovely that the question
Speaker 221
1:13:09
that correct yes mr chairman thank you uh... most of my questions have been uh...
Speaker 222
1:13:14
yes but i do have still some confusion on uh... represent collins on page two line eight and nine can you can you tell me
where on campus you will be permitted to have a firearm if this passes If you are any place with the exception, I'm on.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:13:38
Yeah, and the lines you're talking about, that says, okay, the current law is covered in lines 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, down to, you know, whatever, 20, and then it's accepting those areas because those are handled differently. Those are actually handled down in Section 4.
And it talks about the campus, and it says in lines 27, 28, 29, campus means the grounds and buildings owned or leased by a university college or community college. Okay,
Speaker 226
1:14:09
so could you carry a weapon in the actual educational building? Yeah, so if a
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:14:15
professor had a concealed handgun on his or her person, in his or her purse, something like that, and was teaching a class in a building, yes, they could.
Speaker 227
1:14:25
And you could also at a sporting event?
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:14:29
No, sporting events are handled separately. With that, I think, last session.
Yeah, there's another restriction for those. This does not affect any of
Speaker 227
1:14:39
those, so there is no carry in a sporting event. Okay. You started out with your introduction,
Speaker 229
1:14:45
and you list some of the horrible situations that has occurred. And until you got down to Virginia, you mentioned one person. I think you mentioned another incident, one person, two, one again. How would this legislation prevent those incidents from happening?
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:15:04
Yeah, I want to do two things. And answer to your question, so
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:15:08
I'd like to do two things. Number one, I'm going to mention some more because I just picked the ones I picked for a reason. Either they were in Arkansas or they were just unbelievably off the charts crazy or they were extraordinarily recent. So let me just read you a few more. University of Iowa, Iowa City, United States, November 1, 1991, six people dead. Simons Rock College, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, December 14, 1992, two dead. San Diego State University, San Diego, California, August 15, 1996, three dead.
Appalachian School of Law, Grundy, Virginia, January 16, 2002, three dead.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:15:39
dead. Northern Illinois University, six dead in 2008. University of Alabama in Huntsville. Excuse me, are these gunshot, all victims
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:15:52
campus shootings. Alabama, 2008, three dead. And there are more. But the way that you would prevent even the first one stems from the fact that this bill has
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:16:06
two, protective effects. Protective effect number one is deterrence. So the crazy nut is sitting in his or her garage deciding, where do I go to kill people today? And one of the reasons, perhaps, that they may skew toward a place like a college campus or other gun-free zone is the knowledge that they can get a lot of what they want to accomplish done before anybody, law enforcement can get there knowing that concealed carry is prohibited.
So it's the deterrent effect that would help hopefully stop some of those one-person events. And then separately, there's a protective effect which has two components. Component number one is the obvious one. Somebody starts shooting and conceivably they are shot or stopped from shooting more. Active component number two, though, is no less important in my view. When I think about my children in a classroom when something's happening and the text messages are going out saying, there's a nut killing people, the first thing you think of is, what
do I do? Where do I go? Do I just sit here like a sitting duck or is there somewhere I can go where I know or have some confidence? And a teacher or professor that may be in a scenario to say, come to my office if you If you can make it over here, I may be able to
Speaker 227
1:17:33
help protect you a little bit better than if you're just a
Speaker 229
1:17:36
sitting duck. So you mentioned if there's even one professor on campus that has a firearm, if you're at a campus like the University of Arkansas, since you're from that area, and a professor
has a handgun in the business building and an incident happens across campus, what good would that do if a person could be in some campuses more than a mile away? Yeah, there's no question that any given individual that may
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:18:04
be carrying a concealed weapon on any given day in any given incident
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:18:09
may not be able to kind of stop that one. There's no superman effect where he or she could fly to that area and save the day.
So I would totally agree with you. So I would not pretend for a moment that this will prevent every single conceivable campus shooting incident. What I'm suggesting to you is it can help us protect from some of them through the deterrent effect and through the protective effect because I could almost reverse the scenario you described and said, well, what if somebody was coming in the front door and a student was heading into somebody's office and they pulled out a gun when they saw a gun behind them and the person ducked in their office and the aggressor was prevented from chasing them
down and shooting them in the head because there was a professor standing there
Speaker 229
1:18:56
with a weapon. Yeah, you know, and certainly we could do a whole lot of what ifs. I mean, you know, what if a student and a faculty member were at odds and tempers flared and the student actually tried to attack the faculty member who had a firearm. Could then there be a problem with the professor actually using the firearm
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:19:17
against the student? Well, we've certainly seen incidents where either a disgruntled potential faculty member
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:19:22
or a student has pulled out and killed their professor. That happened at the University of Arkansas back in 2000 where a professor was murdered by a student who, I'm going to use the word fortunately, although I hate to use it, then turn the gun on himself rather than run out and kill additional people. But those situations do occur, and often when they occur, the person who's got a problem not being or is being denied tenure or whatever it is, they bring the gun and then they shoot somebody when they're there. And last question.
Speaker 227
1:19:53
Did you get a lot of people in your district, you mentioned that this was a major issue in your campaign. Were there a lot
Speaker 229
1:20:01
of faculty from the University of Arkansas that came to you and said that that they would like
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:20:07
to carry weapons on campus? I don't know how you define a lot. I have gotten
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:20:13
certainly several faculty members. As you can imagine, people are not excited about jumping up and down over things that they know that perhaps the administration isn't going to be highly in favor of, and
so they need to be a little bit low key. But yes, I've got emails and personal friends of mine and others that have come up and said this is something they'd like to do. In fact, they feel that, you know, maybe it's a little unfair that they can and other places can. And I've also had people describe for me, especially women who may have to go to late at night for grading papers or whatever they may need to do, who are perhaps more concerned about their safety, who would like to be able to help protect themselves.
Speaker 164
1:20:54
And Professor Steinbuck, is it? Yes, sir. If this passes, would you like to carry a- Well, you know, it's a good question. I do not currently have a concealed carry license, so I would have to decide whether I would pursue one. With that said, I have had a concealed, well, I'm not sure it's concealed. When I lived in the state of New York, I had a carry license, but it was a limited license for target use.
I have been trained in the use of firearms. I mention this to say that, just to repeat a point that I made earlier, which is, of all the people I think that you can feel comfortable with carrying a gun, faculty members I think you're probably safest with. But, of course, the excellent question you asked a moment ago raises the question, you know, who do we want to have guns, right? Can you envision a situation in which a police officer goes awry and
does something with his gun that he would not have done had he not had a gun? It's possible, right? But we're talking about balancing the risks with the benefits. And most of us prefer our current circumstance, unlike, for example, like the English model, where the cops, for the most part, don't have guns. Because we recognize, unfortunately, that there are a lot of dangers in our society, and the police officers need guns. And so on balance, and it's not an even balance, we strongly favor police officers having guns.
And I would suggest to you and the rest of the committee that on balance we do better by having educated
Robert Steinbuck
Unverified
1:22:35
faculty members the opportunity to carry a gun. And it's not a requirement, right? So if they don't want to carry a gun, they don't have to. the opportunity, after proper training, to carry a gun. Thank you, Mr. Steele. Mr.
Pierce, I'll thank you next. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
1:22:59
And I do have a permit, and I hope I'm one of the ones you wouldn't want to walk with
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
1:23:10
thinking about someone else. That's what I was afraid you couldn't say. I was on the campus that's had three shootings in three months I had a high school that had three shootings in one month, I mean in three months and we lost three students and it wasn't because of somebody coming on the campus some crazy, it was because they committed suicide on our
campus with a gun so I have a problem with guns on campus it's not that I'm against guns because I probably have more than anybody in this room and I probably have I don't know about that my wife says I got two gun cases and two closets and an attic full but there's a problem when I see young people go up in front of their history class and pull a pistol out and shoot their self in the head
right in front of my son was in the history class that doesn't have anything we just said it doesn't supposed to have you can supposed to have or not supposed to have if ands and but all you want to I taught safety classes on guns for years and you're just as dead an accident as you are somebody walks up and blows your brains out I'm sorry but that's the way it is the most lax state in the nation is Arizona if I'm not mistaken on handguns
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:24:33
or concealed weapons. To my understanding, not with regard to college campuses, I think Utah has had the rules there. Well,
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
1:24:43
I'm just saying overall. I'm just saying overall from what I get from the NRA or whatever, they say the most relaxed handguns. And I don't think several months ago a handgun, if it was so relaxed and there's non-restricted on their handguns, I think it took a 60-year-old man to wrestle this one that was crazy down, as you say, and get him, and he didn't have a gun permit, and he didn't have it.
So I'm not saying every time is not what's going to happen, but somewhere we've got to look at this and say, where do we stop? Where do we stop this with guns? I don't think arming everybody is going to stop the problem 100%, and I know you're saying that, Mr. Collins, it's not going to solve the problem no matter which way you go on But where do we get arms and where do we keep doing this? Is this a race, an arms race, to see who can outdo the next person or the next campus or the next schools?
Are we going to go into elementary schools? Are we going to go into high schools next after we get campuses? What are we going to do? Say that every teacher
Speaker 155
1:25:47
can carry one? Those are covered by federal rules, sir, so that's
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
1:25:50
not within a permit. I know that. I mean, that's the thing. But it still lets people get on because, I mean, it was covered under federal rules when these kids brought their guns on the campus. You can't check everybody, and you admitted that, and I appreciate you saying that. But I'm just saying I have been on the campus, and I have had to go and look mothers in the eyes, and that's a bad situation, and what you're talking about is a bad situation too.
But there's always an other side of everything when you look at it, and I'm not against people having guns. Like I said, I've got as many as everybody else, or maybe, you know. But there's got to be some give and take somewhere in this that we've got to look
Speaker 209
1:26:26
at it. Sir, may I just comment that I sympathize with your situation and I fully agree with you. That is, the difficulty that we face with this bill
Speaker 167
1:26:35
or any bill regarding guns is how do we strike the right balance? That's what I'm asking.
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
1:26:41
Now, is this it or where do we stop? But if this is it, we may want to stop. But if this is just to get the door and get it a little bit open, where are we going to stop? Nobody has told me that. Nobody has said, where are we going to stop
Robert Steinbuck
Unverified
1:26:54
this? Right. And that's an excellent question. And I'm not here to speak to that issue, right? I'm just here to comment on this particular way. Well,
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
1:27:00
I appreciate everybody trying to do what they think for the constitutional rights and for the people and for their constituents. I have no problem with that. But I have been on that campus. I have had to go to parents. I have looked them in the eye.
And it's a terrible situation. Either you're in an accident or somebody just walks up and shoots you when you're robbing a bank or robbing a school. It is terrible. That's right. So let's think about guns a little bit more than just saying they're guns and crazies have them, and I appreciate what Mr. Robinson Collins is saying because, you know, it's a terrible situation. So let's don't get one side against the other on this thing that's got to be this. Let's look at what we can do for both sides of these parents, an accident or the other way, too.
That's all I'm asking in this whole situation.
Don't you agree? Yes, sir, I do agree. I agree, too. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:28:02
I do have a doctor's appointment that I am. I understand, Mr. Parris, your excuse. Next, I have Representative Hutchinson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was in Kemple Hall, August 2000, when a grad student walked in and shot Professor John Locke.
I remember the grief, the shock, the chaos that ensued. And one of the questions we asked was, could he defend himself? And the police said he had a bullet wound in his hand. That's all he had was to hold up his hand. And no one saw this coming. The young man didn't have a criminal record. It came out of nowhere. And this professor had no way to defend himself at all.
And that certainly changed my view of giving professors a right to at least have some way to defend themselves. Mr. Collins, right now, it's true, just like it was in 2000, that student knew the professor would have no way to defend himself, didn't he? Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. Next, I have Ms. Clemmer.
I think that's the last question of the committee. and then we'll go to the audience for a brief time.
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
1:29:22
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Boy, this is really interesting because I am that teacher in that classroom. And I will tell you just my personal feelings for a moment as I lead to my question. It's a pretty terrible, after Virginia Tech shooting, when people were barricaded in the classroom knowing they were sitting ducks. It was, frankly, pretty terrifying to consider that you could be in a situation with no help.
During that time, because cell phones are such a menace to the world, I was not carrying my cell phone to class. I didn't want to mistakenly leave it on. And after that, I did begin carrying my cell phone. But that really isn't my question. Is it your opinion, Mr. Collins, that there are
Speaker 155
1:30:17
guns on campus right now? I have no opinion on that. They're not
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
1:30:21
there legally. Correct. Are they, would it be your opinion that, I mean, we do nothing to prevent,
we don't do checks of individuals with guns? I mean, my question would be, do you think it's a safe assumption that there is nothing to prevent someone from walking on campus with a gun? We're content to harm? I've not seen a lot
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:30:41
of things. I think people debate what do different police forces do at different times. I think there's enough incidents, 17 incidents in the last four years at least, to demonstrate that it's not difficult if you have the intent to shoot somebody to get a gun on campuses across the country.
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
1:30:58
Let me phrase this differently. Are there any backpack checks on any campus, any coat checks on any campus to make sure we have metal detectors on any building in any campus in the state? I mean, maybe we do. I don't know. Not to my knowledge, but
Speaker 186
1:31:19
I'm not an expert in that area. Thank you.
Erid, there is one more question from the committee. Representative Hobbs.
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
1:31:30
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Collins, since you obviously have researched this topic in preparing for this bill. Would you help me remember, and maybe you do remember, but was there not a recent incident where the professor stated he had been fearful for his life because of the behavior of a student in his class? Did he not then actually kill?
I mean, I don't remember. Can you help me
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:32:03
remember that, if you know what I'm talking about? The specific story that you're talking about, I don't remember it well enough to try and act
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:32:11
like I've got it right. I could research that, but I have heard things where people were concerned
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
1:32:16
for their safety for certain reasons, and then different things have happened. And I'm kind of the same way you are, but it seems like the professor was even almost afraid to tell him not to come in his class because of harm. And under current law, had he gone to an administrator, his board of trustees, and said, you know,
I have concerns about this, I have my concealed gun permit, may I have it to not only protect myself but also to protect the students who are in my care, could that board have given them permission to do that? No, not under our current statute. And so had he taken it upon himself to do that, what would the penalty have
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:33:01
concealed carry permit would be revoked, would be one thing.
I'm sure it would depend on what kind of an interaction happened to discover that he had the gun. MS. I mean, just having the gun, yeah. MR. Yeah. And I don't know what the criminal penalties are for possession of a weapon, but I know that his concealed carry permit would be revoked. In fact, in Florida, for example, there are about 1.7 million concealed carry holders and about .01 percent of those have been revoked, and the most common reason they're revoked is because of having a concealed carry weapon in a restricted area.
Obviously that's a low percentage, .01 percent, and what it really speaks to is how responsible that population is. Now, obviously, the study was Florida, but my belief is Arkansans are just as responsible as Floridians. Okay. And since you mentioned Florida, that leads to
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
1:33:53
another question, if I may. I'm sorry. I was conversing. When he mentioned Florida, I was kind of thinking about this. If I may ask another question, sir. Just don't play on your old ground. Okay. I'll try not to do that. And again, several years ago, it seems like when there were, like maybe in the early 90s
or so, it seems like there seemed to be a big wave of crime going on throughout our nation. And I remember reading that Florida's concealed gun permits had went up and it seemed like the crime went down. So do you believe that by just allowing the guns on campus to permit holders and the provisions you have put
Speaker 252
1:34:42
within your law could have a preventive effect?
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:34:46
Yes, there is lots of criminal research out there, and when people have a weapon to protect themselves, there's data to support that crime will go down. Again, it's not a panacea. There's no 100 percent solution. What we're looking at is how do we take the level of murder that we're suffering through today and the tragedy we're suffering through today and mitigate it and to start to reverse it, to slow it down, to
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:35:09
allow us to protect our children and grandchildren. MS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
MR. Representative Hutchinson, you recognize? MS. Motion at proper time,
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:35:25
sir. MR. Okay. Thank you. And seeing more, no other questions from the committee, we'll go to the audience at this time and we'll go to the against first. Mr. Collins, would you all remove yourself from the other table there and come back and you'll get a chance to close
for your bill in a few minutes. First I think we have Dr. Barry Ballard from Washtenaw Technical College. He wishes to speak against this bill.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:35:50
We have almost a name change at that college, excuse me, but we will shortly.
Speaker 163
1:36:00
Will you recognize yourself at the record, please, and you may proceed.
Speaker 255
1:36:05
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I'm Barry Ballard, president of Ouachita Technical College. I'm a sportsman. I've got handguns. I love deer hunting. I've had concealed carry training. But I believe from my perspective as the CEO of a college that if we have more guns, there's
likelihood we're going to have more shootings. And I'm against this bill, and I've been in education for 44 years, 35 as a line supervisor, I've had to discipline people, terminate people, make decisions on grievance hearings. And I've had a staff member threaten my life over that kind of personnel decision. I've had a faculty member threaten my life and did this gesture, saying, I'm going to get you.
And I shudder to think many times if these disgruntled, possibly crazy people had a gun that my level of threat might be significantly escalated. We have on our small campus several people that carry guns. I've got two full-time and one part-time faculty that are certified police officers, And they carry guns.
They are less than 30 seconds from my office and frankly they are about 30 seconds from about any building in our campus. We have a great partnership with our local law enforcement officer and there is a patrol car within less than four minutes from our campus. And I would prefer to suffer that four minute delay and have people that are experienced dealing with these kinds of incidents than to think that we've got 200 employees on our campus.
You know, I'm in South Arkansas, and that's kind of redneck country, and a lot of people have guns, and the fewer of them we have on our
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:38:15
campus, I think the safer we're all going to be. Thank you, sir. Questions? Committee? Seeing
Speaker 256
1:38:21
none. Thank you, Dr. Ballard. At this
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:38:24
point, we have Senator Raepert that wishes to speak for this bill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 258
1:38:34
I appreciate the opportunity to address my colleagues in the House, and
Senator Jason Rapert
Unverified
1:38:37
I appreciate you for entertaining this particular bill. I just have three very simple points to make to you. First of all, in this country, we have an overarching right. we have a right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Second point is, there has never been one gun law, one restrictive gun law, anywhere, any place, at any time that has kept someone from taking up a weapon in rage somewhere
and harming people. Number three, in Arkansas, we have a system in place that allows background checks, allows training and authorizes people just like you and me to go out and get an Arkansas concealed carry permit. We have this in place. The gentleman just gave his testimony. I understand it. I've been threatened more since I've been in the legislature than I ever have been in my life.
It gives me some comfort to know that if I ever encountered someone that come against me or my family, that I have the opportunity to protect myself. The logic that keeping someone from being able to protect themselves that has a license to do so from the Arkansas State Police is completely invalid. So I want to ask you in this situation, what you're going to authorize to do as someone,
maybe like me that has a strong work ethic and leaves late at night, to not have to be that professor that's leaving late at night under the cover of darkness on a parking lot somewhere from not having the ability to protect themselves if someone wanted to do them harm. Thank
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:40:26
you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, sir, for your testimony. Questions to anyone? Would
you take questions, Senator? Representative McLean? I'd just assume not, but I guess I will. Senator, I appreciate you. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman.
Speaker 261
1:40:38
Go ahead, Mr. McLean. I appreciate you being here, Senator. Do we have
Speaker 262
1:40:43
any specific examples where a crime was afforded or someone's life was saved because someone had a concealed carry that an incident was avoided? I mean, like the Gabrielle Giffords situation in Tucson, I think Representative Pierce talked about, that's pretty much anyone can have a gun anywhere there, and someone came up and shot her in the head.
Do we have any specific examples where what we're trying
Speaker 263
1:41:15
to do today has stopped a mass killing from occurring? Actually,
Senator Jason Rapert
Unverified
1:41:22
we do have. And there are several cases, and I want to actually utilize an example of one that is very valid and is germane to this specific situation. In 2002, at Appalachian School of Law, you had armed assailants that had targeted that school.
Three students, two of them legally armed, confronted and physically subdued a fellow student who had killed three people. In at least three other school shootings, including a 1997 incident in Pearl, Mississippi, law-abiding people were able to retrieve guns from vehicles or elsewhere and stop the attacks. The problem is, is that when someone confronts you with a weapon, and they've been aggravated because you just graded them poorly on their thesis,
and they confront you, and they aim a loaded weapon right at your forehead, you don't have time for a law enforcement officer to arrive. What you're going to hope for is that you just have the opportunity to quickly defend yourself before they take your life. Sir, these professors, these academics that are in these schools, they have wives, they have children, and they have family. And you have heard case after case after case that's been presented to you here today
that shows you that our college campuses have become, in some respect, a very dangerous place to be. And by virtue of not allowing these people to protect themselves, we are opening them up to further incidents in the future. It was mentioned here something as an aside. You talked about prohibited places. Churches prohibited. We have a case out of Texas here recently where a pastor was able to stop a crime at that church
because he had a concealed carry permit down in Texas. So back to your point, your question. Right here is one example. One example that's very, very specific to answer your question. You know, I really do not understand any state that prohibits trained individuals who are monitored. Every time I get stopped in a traffic stop, that state policeman asks for my permit.
They have a record of these people. They can be tracked. They can be, if we see, if there's something that occurs with law enforcement in any other realm, they're going to know immediately that these people have a concealed carry permit. I would implore you in this situation, if this had been one of your family at Appalachian School of Law the day that this occurred, I would be getting a hold of these individuals that had those handguns available that were legally armed, and I would thank them for saving the life of my family.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:44:20
Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator. Any other questions, committee? Seeing none, we'll go to the next person on the list, and I think that is Richard Hudson from University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He will speak against the
bill. Mr. Hudson, would you recognize yourself for the record, please, and
Speaker 266
1:44:41
then you may continue. Yes, Richard Hudson, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I'll be very brief, Mr. Chairman. Our campus police chief had hoped to be here today, but his schedule did not permit it, and he sent me a series of statements.
Speaker 267
1:44:54
I just want to read a portion of one of them to you. He says, Police officers have a very difficult job when it comes to responding to emergency situations that involve violence. I do not want to see a situation where an unknown number of persons are armed with a gun, albeit well-intentioned, when our officers are responding to a violent incident. This puts our officers in a very tough situation, as they first have to discern who is on our side against those who are trying to harm members of our community. In those violent instances, the outcome could potentially be much worse by allowing weapons than by not allowing them.
Officers must be able to clearly identify
Speaker 23
1:45:36
the suspect without hesitation. Thank you. That concludes my testimony.
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:45:42
With questions, Mr. Hudson, we have one question of the Lieutenant Hutchinson. What has the university done to prevent another tragedy like
Speaker 267
1:45:50
Professor John Locke's murder? We have over 30 police officers, and they annually are trained in specifically responding
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:45:57
to violent events. But I think you had many officers on campus the day Professor Locke was murdered.
Speaker 267
1:46:03
Yes, they arrived within less than one minute, but you're right. But nothing is going to always prevent a killing,
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:46:16
regardless of the Army. MS. Okay. Thank you. MR. Thanks, sir. At this point, we'll go to former Representative Dan Greenberg. He speak for the bill. And I just request let's keep –
don't play any old ground. You're recognized. MR. Well, thank you for letting me
Dan Greenberg
Unverified
1:46:31
speak. I want to begin by saying I work for a nonprofit organization.
I'd just like to make a point about the bill rather than speaking for or against, if that will be permitted. MR. That will be fine. MR. You know, I've heard a number of people today talk about anecdotes and their personal experience and their personal theories about things. I want to say that we've actually got two representatives from universities here, and I was sort of surprised that they didn't talk about what universities are supposed to do, and that's to produce peer-researched answers to these questions looking at data using
the scientific method, that's how we answer these larger questions, and that's really superior to our own personal experience in some of these things. I looked at this question of concealed carry and whether it makes us safer a couple years ago, and I found that there is not one study that suggests that concealed carry laws and permitting concealed carry makes us less safe. There is some disagreement about how much safer it makes us. disagree as to whether it makes it a little safer or a lot safer.
There's some disagreement there. There's some debate about that, but there is no debate that there is a strong relation between crime dropping in jurisdictions that permit people to carry concealed weapons. I don't think that that's the subject of any doubt or any controversy among academics if
Speaker 273
1:47:53
you look at the peer-researched and peer-reviewed materials.
Thanks. Thank you, sir. We have one question. Representative Steer. Yes, Mr.
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
1:48:01
Greenberg. The question I have is, do you feel that the staff should
have a greater right to carry than any other citizen of Arkansas who has that same license?
If it's true that they will be safer, then wouldn't other people be safer if they are afforded that same right? I'm
Speaker 273
1:48:25
sorry, I don't quite understand the question. Okay, this law only gives the right for staff members,
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
1:48:31
licensed staff members, to carry their gun. It does not give the right to a licensed student, even though they might be 30 years old getting their Ph.D., they don't have the right to carry that weapon to protect themselves.
We are giving a right to a portion of the citizenry, but not everybody. Why do we make that distinction? Well, I think that the public
Dan Greenberg
Unverified
1:48:55
policy of Arkansas is that we have a pretty extensive concealed carry checking process, and I believe Professor Steinbuck went into this a little bit. You know, there are certain tests you have to pass. You have to avoid having a history of mental illness. You have to avoid having a criminal history. There are all number of characteristics that you have to have. So I'm not sure that, you know, I personally would object to a rule that says there are
more characteristics than you have to have than to just be 18 years old and breathing. And I believe, you know, I seem to recall that there were some statements made by other people who testified before, not here, but in other places, that, you know, we don't want 18-year-olds at beer parties and so forth. So maybe there's some ground for regulation in that way. But you know what? That's a real tentative thing. That's not something I've thought about. I'll just say maybe there are reasons that you want to have some kind of restrictive process. That's kind of a larger question the bill addresses.
Okay. That's a good answer, but it didn't answer my question. That was my goal. Yes. No, I have to tell you, I really haven't thought very much about the question you raised. I mean, I might suggest it's a little bit
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
1:50:02
outside the scope of my competence in this bill. Okay, so my question is, just from your experience as an attorney, if I'm licensed to carry a handgun, would you rather me have a handgun on campus as one of those professors? If I'm both licensed, he's licensed, I'm licensed.
Who would you rather have a gun there to protect you? having you by
Speaker 273
1:50:24
my side would be okay with me. But under this
Dan Greenberg
Unverified
1:50:29
law, I wouldn't be able to do that. Well, you know, I tried to pass laws myself when I was here for four years that would solve all the problems of the world, and I failed to do so. I think I succeeded in
Speaker 277
1:50:40
passing a few that helped a little bit and solved a few problems, and I think that that's the goal of
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:50:46
this bill. Thank you, Mr. Greenberg. And you must know Mr. Stewart has won some international awards
with his little pistol. You want him by your side, too. At this point, we'll go to
Robert Evans
Unverified
1:50:58
Robert Evans, ASU, to speak against the bill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Robert Evans, Executive Director of Governmental Relations. Push your button again,
Robert. It would already be on. Thank you. Executive Director of Governmental Relations for Arkansas State University System. ASU's system is opposed to House Bill 1479.
The ASU system Board of Trustees has adopted a resolution prohibiting all weapons on campus, with the appropriate exception being our certified law enforcement agency, UPD, at the respective campuses within the system. And the primary purpose for the Board of Trustees' rationale is the welfare and safety of our students. Thank you very much. Thank you. question. Ms. Hopper, you have a question? MS. I do.
Speaker 216
1:51:56
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Evans, would you clarify for us, please, in that
why you represent the system that every campus does not have certified law enforcement officers on it, correct? MR. Correct. MS. Okay. Thank you. MR. Thank you, Mr. Evans. MR. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. MR. Okay. We have no one else to speak for or against the bill from the audience. We'll come back to
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:52:18
the committee. I think we have a motion, Representative Hutchinson? Motion do pass. We have a motion do pass. At this
point we'll let Mr. Collins come back and close his bill before we do that.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:52:35
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the time of all
Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:52:40
the committee members and all the people that have come here. I think we've had a lot of good discussion during the speaking for and against the bill. great points were made, and I just wanted to touch on those so we don't plow new ground. Number one, gun laws don't stop people who are intent on killing from bringing a gun and killing. Number two, existing law enforcement will continue, and that's a good thing.
This bill will just augment the protection of our children. Number three, the challenge of police officers or other law enforcement officers from just determining who is a perpetrator and who is not is the same challenge all of our law enforcement officers have throughout our cities and towns because concealed carry holders are all over the place today. So that's a manageable challenge. And Mr. Stewart, you obviously know much more about our concealed carry laws certainly than
I do, and I appreciate so much all the different points you brought up. from a principal standpoint, I think you're absolutely right. There is no principled reason to say that our good concealed carry process should be restricted just to professors and full-time faculty. I totally agree with you on that. However, I think Representative Pierce made a very good point earlier about the need to strike a balance, the need to put ourselves in a comfortable place where we can be confident that we're doing the right thing for our children
and our grandchildren by improving their safety, improving the protection of those we care so deeply about without creating a greater risk. And the last thought I'd leave you with is the educators and the administrators, all those folks have their responsibility and their charges, primarily educating our kids. But when it comes to protecting them and our Second Amendment rights and liberties, that's That's really up to us, their elected representatives.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:54:47
So I sure would appreciate a good
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:54:49
vote. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Collins. We have a motion on the floor for a motion to do pass. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? No.
Speaker 285
1:55:07
No. Roll call. Let's see one hand. I see two. Roll call, Mr. . Representative Bradford. No. Representative Webb. No. Representative Pierce, Representative Pierce, Representative Hutchinson, Representative Stewart, Representative Brown, Representative Baird, Representative Summers, Representative Hobbs, Representative Carnine, Representative Dale, Representative Hopper, Representative Klemmer,
Representative McLean? Yes. Representative Dickinson? No. Representative English? Representative English. Representative Steele? Representative Steele? Representative Wren? No. Representative Roebuck? No. He only got eight. The committee has eight votes for,
which you need 11 to pass, so you fail your bill, Mr.
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
1:56:17
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
1:56:19
the vote. Thank you. The committee, thank you. I think we will adjourn until next Tuesday.
Agenda
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Donna Hutchinson
Unverified
Representative Eddie L. Cheatham Chair
Unverified
Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 5
Speaker 19
Representative Reginald Murdock
Unverified
Speaker 28
Representative Randy Stewart
Unverified
Speaker 35
Representative Ann V. Clemmer
Unverified
Speaker 46
Representative Les "Skip" Carnine
Unverified
Speaker 61
Representative Marshall Wright
Unverified
Speaker 67
Speaker 64
Speaker 80
Representative Tim Summers
Unverified
Speaker 87
Speaker 106
Speaker 108
Speaker 125
Speaker 124
Speaker 138
Speaker 136
Speaker 141
Speaker 151
Charlie Collins
Unverified
Representative Charlie Collins
Unverified
Speaker 164
Speaker 166
Speaker 209
Speaker 218
Speaker 221
Speaker 222
Speaker 226
Speaker 227
Speaker 229
Speaker 231
Robert Steinbuck
Unverified
Representative Bobby J. Pierce
Unverified
Speaker 237
Speaker 155
Speaker 167
Speaker 186
Representative Debra M. Hobbs
Unverified
Speaker 252
Speaker 163
Speaker 255
Speaker 256
Speaker 258
Senator Jason Rapert
Unverified
Speaker 261
Speaker 262
Speaker 263
Speaker 266
Speaker 267
Speaker 23
Dan Greenberg
Unverified
Speaker 273
Speaker 277
Robert Evans
Unverified
Speaker 216
Speaker 285