Senate Judiciary Committee cleared it. Now the Senate as a whole has to vote on it. The governor, who is not on my good list most of the time, has made noises sounding like he would sign it into law this year.
The proposed law actually only affects those 21 and older, who have been through the background checks and fingerprinting necessary to get a license. Thus, almost no undergraduates would be affected -- only a few upper-classmen, graduate students, and adults who were attending college later in life would be eligible. These will be people who have proven their capacity to handle adult stress without resorting to crime or violence, or ending up in mental health care or drug/alcohol rehab. The crime rate among concealed-carry permit holders is vanishingly small, but they do provide an important distributed defense in the rare but not unheard-of case of a terrorist attack or active shooter.
In spite of that, there was a three hour hearing in which people came and railed against it. Even in Georgia, a lot of the Great and the Good are terrified of handguns.
Because Prohibition worked so well.
ReplyDeleteThere are parallels, BTW. The focus on the militia requirement arose as Americans became more nervous about all those undesirables having guns in the first half of the 20th C: Irish, Italians, Slavs, Negroes, Hot-tempered Latins. Not like those dependable WASPS who were in the militia and had been thus "checked out" by some responsible individuals.