RICHMOND, Va. — A Senate panel rejected what gun-control proponents called a back-door attempt to get firearms on college campuses Friday, as several measures on both sides of the gun issue were defeated in a usually gun-friendly House committee.
Sen. Jill Vogel’s bill would have prohibited state agencies, including colleges and universities, from enacting gun laws that are more stringent than those passed by the Legislature. The Senate Rules Committee rejected the proposal on a 12-2 vote.
Vogel said it was never her intention to target colleges and universities. She said gun owners deserve consistency in gun laws, and that elected officials — not state bureaucrats and college boards — should set those guidelines.
“These are decisions that the legislature should not delegate,” said Vogel, R-Winchester.
Last month, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld George Mason University’s prohibition against guns in campus buildings and at sports and entertainment events. The policy does not bar guns from open campus grounds.
A gun owner who is not a student but uses the school’s libraries and other facilities had challenged the school’s policy. The court relied on Virginia’s law specifically granting state agencies those policymaking duties in its decision.
Robert Sadtler, a gun owner from Richmond, said agencies have “a crazy quilt of patchwork rules and regulations.”
