Guns In Trunks On Campus? Governor Haslam Says He’ll Go Along With The Legislature

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam may sign a bill allowing students and faculty to store guns in their cars while parked on college campuses.

Guns on College Campuses

House Bill 2131, which allows guns in trunks on college campuses, isn’t the legislature’s first proposal to increase on-campus handgun access. Still, the governor says he considers bills on a case-by-case basis.

He says that, although he hasn’t read th
e bill, it appears consistent with “the rules outside of college campuses.” 
That’s why he says he’ll “defer to the will of the legislature,” meaning he’s likely to sign the bill.

But Haslam is less enthusiastic about proposals with less precedent. “Some of the other 
bills with guns on campuses, I think those should be left to the decision of that individual campus,” he said.

Haslam’s referring to
Senate Bill 2376, which would permit full-time employees of state universities to carry handguns on campus. The proposal was on the docket for a committee meeting Tuesday, but action has been deferred for another week.

Guns in K-12 Schools

Legislators are also angling to pass more lax firearm regulations for Tennessee’s K-12 schools.

One such bill,
HB

1751, would let school boards decide whether someone with a permit could carry a handgun within a school or while traveling for “school functions” like sporting events and field trips. School boards would also determine acceptable manner of carry. That bill may be considered on Wednesday.

As lawmakers deliberate, gun-control advocates may be comforted by the record of similar measures in last year’s legislative session 
— 
two 2015 proposals to loosen restrictions on handgun access on K-12 campuses (
HB 0481
 
and
 
HB 0173) never made it to the floor.