County commissioner to lobby lawmakers on campus carry

A Sedgwick County commissioner is pushing for the state to let concealed carry on college campuses go into effect on July 1.

Commissioner Jim Howell, during his time as a state lawmaker, carried a bill to the Kansas House floor that, in part, required public colleges and universities to allow students to carry concealed weapons in buildings on campus after July 1.

Multiple bills have been introduced this session in an effort to stop campus carry from going into effect. Howell said he probably will testify against one of those bills, HB 2074, in Topeka on Wednesday morning instead of attending a Sedgwick County Commission meeting at the same time in Wichita.

“I’ve been attached to this bill from the very beginning and I hate to see this be reconsidered,” Howell said. “We need to let the law go forward as it was passed.”

Howell said colleges had years to get ready for the law to go into effect.

“(Campus carry opponents) are trying to pass a panic bill to somehow change course,” he said.

Howell said fears about guns on college campuses were largely overblown.

“There’s a lot of fear about not knowing what will happen,” Howell said. “But they had the same fear about concealed carry. They had the same fear about open carry. They had the same fear about constitutional carry.

“The fear was much worse than the reality,” he said.

Howell mentioned an incident earlier in January in which a Kansas State University student accidentally shot himself in a residence hall on campus.

“This prohibition … is not keeping students away from guns,” he said. “The idea a resistance to letting law-abiding citizens access firearms is somehow going to keep guns off campus is fiction. It’s not real.”

In a hearing last week, opponents of campus carry repeatedly pointed to the K-State incident as a reason why guns and college students don’t mix.

Commissioners Michael O’Donnell and Richard Ranzau expressed support for Howell on his testimony.

“I’ve always been supportive of campus carry, and my record shows that,” said O’Donnell, a former state senator.

Commission Chairman Dave Unruh said it would be better to not weigh in on campus carry.

Sedgwick County contributes to Wichita State University and the Wichita Area Technical College.

This story was originally published January 31, 2017 at 5:48 PM with the headline "County commissioner to lobby lawmakers on campus carry."