May 7—COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gun owners permitted to carry concealed weapons in the state of South Carolina are soon likely to join residents in 45 other states who can carry their hand guns openly in public — a proposal that has frustrated gun-control advocates, doctors and top law enforcement leaders but was a resounding win for many Republican lawmakers.
With three days left on the legislative calendar, the Senate voted 28-16 mostly down party lines after a more than 12-hour debate to pass H. 3094, a House-sponsored bill that would allow only concealed weapons permit holders the right to carry their hand gun in the open.
Sen. Sandy Senn was the lone Republican to vote against the legislation.
The Republican-controlled Senate made a handful of changes to the bill. They ranged from removing the $50 cost of the permit application fee, to limiting the federal government's intervention and to requiring clerks to report pertinent information to the State Law Enforcement Division within five, not 30, days that would prohibit someone from buying or owning a gun.
But senators also rejected dozens of amendments that included a Republican-pushed attempt to expand the measure by eliminating the law's existing permit and background check requirement entirely, and also Democrat-led efforts to enhance background checks.
"I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't a little bit disappointed, but I actually, I have absolutely no regrets," said GOP state Sen. Shane Martin, who pushed but lost 25-21 his effort to remove the permit requirement. "I won't give up advocating for it. I was so close."
Obviously, Martin said, "the Senate's not ready for it yet."
The bill goes back to the House, likely to reject the changes, triggering a six-member joint panel to hammer out differences.
Gov. Henry McMaster says he will sign any legislation that aims to protect Second Amendment rights.
The bill's passage in the upper chamber Thursday, after having already passed in the House, follows several events involving gun violence in the state. Just days before, Columbia police responded to a shooting in the city's Five Points neighborhood, an entertainment district that includes restaurants, bars and shopping. About a month ago, six people were massacred in a shooting in a York County home. Authorities said a former NFL player who later shot and killed himself was the shooter.
Two days before Thursday's vote, a Senate panel narrowly pushed through a hate crimes bill, named after the late state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was shot and killed with eight other Black churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston in 2015. And the vote came only hours after local law enforcement announced that a Fort Jackson soldier armed with a rifle hijacked a school bus full of elementary school children. Fort Jackson officials later confirmed the rifle did not have ammunition inside it.
Over three days, Senate Democrats decried what they called a blatant attempt by Republicans to assuage a minority of voters to help them — and potentially a gubernatorial candidate — bat away primary opponents.
"A lot of people who care about South Carolina, they're not asking for this," said state Sen. Kevin Johnson, a Democrat, who added it is a "vocal minority that want to carry guns" out in the open.
"I don't understand the fantasy," added Johnson, a concealed weapons permit holder.
Democrats also blasted Republicans for pulling a procedural move that allowed the bill to bypass the full Senate Judiciary Committee and the amendment-drafting process and take priority on the calendar.
The Senate's first hearing was a "very, very abbreviated subcommittee hearing for two days," said Democratic state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, a member of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that advanced the bill in a 3-2 vote. "I don't want anybody to have the impression that this was a landslide vote. It was a close vote."
Republicans have flexed their legislative muscle throughout the five months of the Legislature's work calendar after they gained a tighter grip in November last year over the chamber when the GOP flipped three Senate seats. They also flipped two House seats.
In those months since, Republicans have passed one of the most restrictive abortion measures, now challenged in court, and, aside from guns, are close to passing into law legislation that would expand options for death row inmates to be executed that would include a firing squad.
In April, the House passed the so-called "constitutional carry" bill, but it has sat in the Senate without a hearing.
On open carry, the bill's proponents say nothing in the state law would change aside from where you can carry on your body, and lawmakers pointed to 45 other states, including Georgia and North Carolina, where they have variations of open carry laws.
Guns would still be banned on school and State House property, for instance, and any business that may ban them inside.
Cities and counties also could ban guns at certain organized events, including carnivals, festivals and parades where hundreds if not thousands of families gather.
"It's a shame that South Carolina is one of those five states that prevents people from carrying firearms open in public," Martin said. "I've been to other states and it hasn't been a problem."
Republican senators also focused on a gap in state law that allows the open carry of long guns, since it only explicitly says handguns.
"Has that been an issue?" said GOP state Sen. Tom Corbin. "I don't think that open carry with a pistol should be an issue either."
But opponents fixated not only on gun violence in the state, but the law enforcement leaders who said the expansion of the state's gun regulations would cause undue harm, putting police officers in precarious positions if they have to respond to an emergency where someone, other than the instigator or suspect, has a gun on them in the open.
Business owners also expressed concern of problems that could arise.
Nearly 30 businesses and restaurant owners wrote a letter that was provided to The State, telling the General Assembly they were "genuinely concerned" about the risk to family safety.
"In the final working days of a year that has presented innumerable challenges for our state, Republicans chose to pander to a far-right group of their supporters rather than solve critical issues for folks back home," Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, a Democrat, said in a provided statement immediately after the vote. "Partisan politics have once again prevailed within their caucus."
