Arizona bill OKs some concealed weapons at schools

PHOENIX — It’s billed as a method of protecting parents from being charged with a crime if they forgot they were carrying a loaded weapon onto school grounds.

But a measure given preliminary House approval Wednesday would make it legal for any parent who has a child at a school to bring that firearm onto the campus and into the school itself if they possess a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon.

A final roll-call vote in the House would send SB 1331 to Gov. Katie Hobbs.

The measure already was approved on a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

In proposing SB 1331, Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, sketched out a scenario of a parent races from work to school after getting about their child being injured in a fall from the monkey bars.

“You happen to have a concealed-carry weapon in your purse because you are a mother who protects her children with her Second Amendment rights,” Shamp said. “You forget that you have that in your purse.”

And that, Shamp said, makes the parent facing a misdemeanor — and possibly a felony — for bringing a loaded gun onto a school campus “simply because you are more concerned with what’s happening at the moment.”

Michael Infanzon, lobbyist for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, had his own scenario.

He pointed out that people can have a weapon in a vehicle on a school campus — as long as it is not loaded.

The problem with that, said Infanzon, is that it requires anyone even driving onto campus to pick up a child to first unload the weapon. And that, he said, creates its own problems.

“If I had a child in school and I was to go to drive on into the line to pick up my child, and I’m carrying a firearm, I would have to unload it, pick them up, and load it back again after I picked them up, and off campus,” Infanzon told members of the Senate Education Committee when the measure was heard there earlier this session.

“Loading and unloading a firearm exacerbates accidental discharges,” he said.

Arizona adults who have not been convicted of felonies always have been able to carry sidearms openly. The right to have a concealed firearm was added in 1994, though that required getting a state-issued permit.

In 2010, however, Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation allowing any adult to carry a concealed gun.

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But some people still want — and the state still issues — permits, though the requirements have been eased over the years.

The Department of Public Safety reports there are currently 452,024 active permits in Arizona.

CCW permit holders still have special privileges, such as the ability to bring their weapons into bars. Arizona also has reciprocity agreements with other states, allowing residents here to carry their concealed weapons in those states which still require permits.

And if this bill were to become law, that permit would allow permit holders to bring their guns onto school campuses if they are parents or guardians of a child there.

During Wednesday’s House vote, Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, who teaches at Tucson High School, said that still doesn’t make the idea of guns on campuses safe.

She cited an incident in May 2022 where a parent came on the campus to pick up his two children who were being suspended. Gutierrez said after meeting with administration he was asked to exit through a door that would not put him near any children.

“He refused and pushed his way through the main campus and the quad,” she said, all while it was lunch time and there were hundreds of students eating there. Gutierrez said he approached a student who had been involved in a scuffle and “threw a punch.”

“It went on from there,” she said, creating a “mini riot,” with police called, pepper spray used, and the school put in lockdown. Meanwhile, Gutierrez said she was trying to keep her own 30 students calm while she was worried that her daughter, who was on lunch break, might get caught up in the violence.

“I shudder to imagine if that parent had a gun on him … SB 1331 would have allowed that parent to bring a gun on campus,” she said.

Rep. Jennifer Pawlik, D-Chandler, said the whole concept is a bad idea.

“Schools, be they elementary schools or universities, are not the place for firearms,” she said. And Pawlik said she feels that way regardless of who would be armed, be it teachers or parents.

Democratic Rep. Keith Seaman, a retired Lake Havasu City teacher who now lives in Casa Grande, said he fears that having armed parents on campus could change the tenor of conferences among parents, teachers and students. He envisioned a father showing up with a weapon “bulging” in his pocket.

“I think rather than having a pleasant parent conference with a student, especially one who’s not doing so well, knowing that that parent has a gun on his person would be rather intimidating,” Seaman said.