GRAND FORKS – A state representative says lawmakers will reconsider bills allowing for firearms to be carried on college campuses after students and administrators spoke out against the proposed change.
Students and administrators from the University of North Dakota and Lake Region State College were among those who criticized two bills that would open college campuses to carrying guns.
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“Students that are living, working and studying on campus deserve to have a reasonable expectation that those around them are not carrying firearms or dangerous weapons,” Katherine Kempel, governmental affairs commissioner for UND’s student government, told the House Energy and Natural Resources committee.
Lawmakers have since voted to place those bills, along with several other pieces of firearm legislation, into a special subcommittee for further review.
Language in
and
would remove a provision of North Dakota Century Code barring firearms or dangerous weapons from a “publicly-owned or operated building.”
Cities, counties and townships would be allowed to pass ordinances banning weapons, provided they require residents to pass through a security checkpoint staffed by armed personnel.
College students and administrators pointed out this offered institutions of higher education no recourse to bar guns or other weapons from campus buildings.
Lloyd Halvorson, a Lake Region State College administrator who also serves as the campus chief of police, appeared in uniform to speak against HB 1588.
“If publicly owned or operated buildings – which is what college campuses fall under – are removed, the distinction between lawful behavior and seriously alarming behavior will become very subjective,” he said.
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“If a dozen people are calling 9-1-1 in a panic because two people are approaching Memorial Union with assault rifles, what is the dispatcher going to say? ‘Sounds like a perfectly legal situation to me. Call back if they start shooting?’”
North Dakota Legislative Council
Kempel noted the change in law would mean students could bring guns into on-campus residences, instead of storing weapons in university police-managed gun lockers that are made available to students.
“For many students, college is a time of increased stress and potential mental health issues,” Kempel said. “With increased access to firearms or dangerous weapons, the risk of students harming themselves or others, whether intentionally or accidentally, is also increased.”
UND President Andy Armacost, UND’s University Senate chair, and representatives from the North Dakota University System, North Dakota Students Association and the North Dakota School Boards Association all offered testimony against HB 1588.
Rep. Pat Heinert, R-Bismarck, lead sponsor on the bill, told the Grand Forks Herald that HB 1588 was meant to respond to several gun bills introduced into prior sessions as well as to adapt to changes to gun law jurisprudence stemming from a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case, NYSRPA v. Bruen.
“The intent was never to involve the universities with this,” he said. “Their section of the law was meant to stay the way it was.”
He said the bill would be amended to address the error.
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Rep. Ben Koppelman, R-West Fargo, also said he planned to amend HB 1365 to exclude buildings on university campuses.
Like Heinert, he said his bill addresses
the changes from the Bruen decision,
which Koppelman argues renders weapon bans on all but a handful of public spaces unconstitutional.
Following testimony on HB 1365 on Monday, Energy and Natural Resources Chair Todd Porter appointed Heinert and three other committee members to review several weapons bills, including HB 1365, 1588 and six others.
HB 1365 was also subject to largely negative testimony from many of the same groups who had opposed 1588.
That bill also earned the ire of the North Dakota Catholic Conference for removing churches and other places of worship from areas where weapons were barred.
Conference co-director Christopher Dodson wrote that current law lets different religious groups decide whether to permit guns in their place of worship.
“The existing law respects the varying religious views on the matter,” Dodson wrote. “Frankly, the only reason for exacting this section of HB 1365 would be to appease individuals who do not have the courtesy to ask for approval or to respect the decision of the place (of) worship.”
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Koppelman said HB 1352 and another he authored with a similar provision,
were meant to change the law such that places of worship would “opt out” of allowing weapons instead of the current “opt in” system.
He said he wanted to keep the provision in at least one of the bills.
“I am pretty committed to having that discussion in one of these bills, because I do think we need to have that discussion,” he said.
One speaker offered testimony “in favor” of HB 1365 and HB 1588, an attorney from the state Department of Health and Human Services, though he was there to request the bills be amended to bar weapons from the North Dakota State Hospital and state behavioral health clinics.
A National Rifle Association lobbyist also asked lawmakers to further amend HB 1365 to preempt local jurisdictions from passing gun laws and to allow for firearms to be carried in the state Capitol.