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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Republican bill that would allow people with concealed weapon permits to carry guns on school grounds is likely going nowhere in the state Assembly, a top GOP leader said Thursday.
Senate President Mary Lazich along with Reps. Jesse Kremer and Robert Brooks began circulating the bill for co-sponsors on Wednesday. The bill is part of a flurry of proposals lawmakers are throwing at their leaders as the session winds down and they prepare to hit the campaign trail. But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters during a question-and-answer session Thursday that this one probably won't get a floor vote in his house.
He said he supports gun rights but the proposal is coming too late — Vos wants the Assembly to finish its work by the end of February — and no one is clamoring for the bill.
"It's not a high priority. In fact, it's not a priority at all," Vos, a Rochester Republican, said. "Quite frankly, as I have traveled around the state and been home in my district there hasn't been a whole lot of people who have asked me for this."
Federal law generally prohibits people from possessing guns on school property without a state license. Wisconsin's concealed carry law doesn't allow carrying in schools or on school grounds; anyone who tries is guilty of a felony punishable by up to 3½ years in prison.
Under the bill, concealed carry licensees could carry on school property. The bill doesn't authorize guns in school buildings but does allow districts to decide for themselves whether to let weapons indoors.
Lazich, who is from New Berlin, said the bill is designed to ensure concealed carry licensees who drop their kids off at school and forget they're carrying aren't arrested. She pointed to a 75-year-old West Allis man with a concealed carry permit who was arrested after he picked up his granddaughter from school with his gun in tow in 2014. He was eventually sentenced to a year on probation.
Told that Vos said the bill is all but dead, Lazich responded by saying school officials asked her to bring the bill forward.
"I think we would be doing a great disservice to our concealed carry holders by putting them all in this awkward situation," she said.
Tom David, vice president of the New Berlin school board, said he asked Lazich to push the bill. He said parents told him a year ago they didn't know dropping their kids off while carrying concealed was a felony.
"They don't even have to get out of the car (to violate the law)," David said. "It's not fair to permit holders."
Kremer said after Vos spoke that he still thinks the Assembly would take up the bill if Lazich could get it through the Senate first.
In a news release Wednesday, Kremer said the measure could save student lives.
"By allowing schools to determine how they wish to protect the children in their care, would-be criminals may be deterred and more lives may be saved," Kremer, of Kewaskum, said in the release.
The bill generated plenty of opposition in the day or so since the lawmakers released it. Both the state Department of Public Instruction and the Wisconsin School Safety Coordinators, a group of school-based personnel who work to improve school safety, have called the bill a bad idea.
"I don't think we need to make it any easier to have weapons around schools," WSSC Executive Director Ed Dorff said.
The superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, Darienne Driver, said the legislation would be "problematic." She said officials for her district don't think guns belong "in or near our schools or any schools for that matter."
Rep. Joel Kleefisch introduced a similar measure during the last legislative session that would have allowed concealed carry licensees to go armed on school grounds. Vos didn't let that bill get a floor vote.
Kremer introduced a bill earlier this session that would have allowed people to carry concealed weapons into college buildings and stadiums but Vos has said that measure isn't going to get a vote either.
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Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1 .
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