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Maria Sachs files amendment to campus carry bill

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

State Sen. Maria Sachs has filed an amendment to this year’s “campus carry” legislation that would allow each public college and university to decide whether to allow concealed weapons on campuses.

Sachs, a Delray Beach Democrat, submitted the change Monday to the bill (SB 68).

The legislation as currently written would delete the current blanket prohibition on concealed weapons being carried into “any college or university facility.”

Gun-rights advocates, such as the National Rifle Association, have joined with legislative Republicans to support the bill, which died last year.

State Sen. Greg Evers, a Baker Republican, is again sponsoring the bill.

However, Democrats, law enforcement and school officials – including Florida State President John Thrasher, a former GOP state senator – have opposed what’s known as the “campus carry” measure.

The bill cleared the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee on Sept. 16 on a 3-2 party-line vote, records show.

It’s next up before the Higher Education Committee at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Before joining Florida Politics, journalist and attorney James Rosica was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He attended journalism school in Washington, D.C., working at dailies and weekly papers in Philadelphia after graduation. Rosica joined the Tallahassee Democrat in 1997, later moving to the courts beat, where he reported on the 2000 presidential recount. In 2005, Rosica left journalism to attend law school in Philadelphia, afterwards working part time for a public-interest law firm. Returning to writing, he covered three legislative sessions in Tallahassee for The Associated Press, before joining the Tribune’s re-opened Tallahassee bureau in 2013. He can be reached at [email protected]

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