Last Updated:March 26. 2008 10:49AM
Published: March 26. 2008 10:00AM
Last Modified: March 26. 2008 10:49AM

MONTGOMERY - A Senate committee today shot down three bills that would have allowed students and professors to legally carry firearms for personal safety and campus protection.

In response to well-publicized campus shootings over the past year, particularly last year's tragedies at Virginia Tech, Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, sponsored three bills that would have allowed policies authorizing certain students and professors to carry firearms.

"We're overly concerned because there is no record of law-abiding students or professors going off their rockers and using weapons" on campuses, Erwin said in response to committee senators speaking against the bills.

The Education Committee declined to approve one bill by a 6-2 vote and then declined 5-3 to approve the other two. Five committee Democrats voted against all three bills and three Republicans voted against the final two. Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Daphne, voted against the first bill and then for the other two.

"As a mother and with kids now in college, I do not feel this is the way to protect ourselves," said Sen. Vivian Figures, D-Mobile, chairman of the committee.

Gordon Stone, executive director of the Alabama Higher Education Partnership, asked committee members to imagine the atmosphere at an Alabama-Auburn game where some students are armed on campus.

The bills would have limited firearms generally to law-abiding students and professors who have completed gun courses.