Justices of the peace defeated repeated motions Monday night to give the Garland County Employee Concealed Carry Plan more consideration.
The Garland County Quorum Court's 9-3 vote will allow county employees with concealed carry permits to bring firearms to work. District 3 JP Denise Marion presented motions to stop the ordinance from being read for a second and third time by title only.
The state's county government code requires an ordinance to be read on three different days before it's adopted, unless two-thirds of the quorum court agrees to suspend the rule. Marion's first motion failed 10-2, with her and District 1 JP Dave Reagan voting in the minority. The second motion failed 9-3, with District 8 JP Ellen Varhalla joining Marion and Reagan in the minority. Varhalla also voted with them in the 9-3 minority that opposed the ordinance's adoption.
Reagan's subsequent motion to table the ordinance for further consideration failed 10-2. He and Marion challenged the majority position that the ordinance serves a safety imperative.
"What message are we sending citizens who conduct business at county offices when they're served by an armed clerk or elected official?" Reagan, reading from a prepared statement, asked the quorum court. "Will we post signs at county offices warning taxpayers they'll be served by an armed employee?
"We are a modern, civilized society, not the lawless Wild West of the 1800s. I motion to table the ordinance and remand it back to committee for further discussion and study."
A 7-5 vote defeated Marion's amendment requiring county employees with concealed carry permits to receive annual live fire and simulation training before they could bring a firearm to work. A separate amendment that was also defeated would have required employees to biannually attend the Civilian Response to an Active Shooter, or CRASE, course offered by the Garland County Sheriff's Department.
Section 4 of the ordinance requires the CRASE course to be attended only once before licensed employees can bring firearms to the building or facility where they're "assigned to perform their job duties."
"The one thing that makes a difference, and upon which there is no disagreement, is that training improves both the safety of those involved in active shooter situations, and the likelihood of a good outcome," Marion, reading from prepared remarks, told the quorum court.
Marion, the lone Public Health, Welfare and Safety Committee member to vote against advancing the ordinance to the full quorum court last month, argued that research supporting the majority's position of more guns making the workplace safer is flawed. She said statistics both sides of the debate use to support their arguments are inconclusive, as research on gun violence hasn't received federal funding in many years.
"Only our bias determines whether or not we can depend on these conclusions or those of any given study," she said, referring to statistics cited by gun rights activist John Lott. "My bias is that guns in the workplace is poor policy. I trust the research compiled by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, compiled from 17 respected sources that indicates the risks of injury and death by accident, misuse, poor storage, suicide, theft and the gun ending up in the perpetrator's hands overwhelm the risk of being involved in an accidental shooting."
District 11 JP Larry Griffin told Marion that not arming employees at the Garland County Court House may make sense in light of the armed court security officers who man a metal detector at the only public entrance, but not at county buildings that are less secure.
"There is an annex building with an assessor, tax collector and state people," he said. "They don't have any detectors for people to go through. They are vulnerable. There are other county buildings that are vulnerable also."
State Rep. Mickey Gates, R-District 22, told the quorum court that legislators who were elected officials at the county level championed the legislation that authorizes the county's employee concealed carry plan. Gates was one of 74 House members to vote for Act 1259 of 2015.
It amended the concealed handgun section of the criminal code to allow licensed countywide elected officials and county employees to bring firearms into county facilities that are their "principal" place of employment.
"It wasn't pushed by gun lobbyists," Gates said, reacting to Reagan's prepared remarks that attributed the legislation to the gun lobby. "It was pushed by a majority of legislators who've served in previous quorum courts and as county judges, assessors, treasures and collectors."
The legislation originated with Senate Bill 159 sponsored by Linda Collins-Smith, R-District 19. The Pocahontas hotelier was a member of the Arkansas Ethics Commission before joining the Legislature. The legislation's primary House sponsor, Tim Lemons, R-District 43, previously served on the Lonoke County Quorum Court.
"All it takes is a bad guy with a gun to get it right once," Gates told the quorum court. "How many people get mad because they feel like government has done them wrong, and they're not reasonable and they're not rational? All it takes is one. I think people ought to be able to defend themselves."
Local on 10/12/2016