One of the many hurdles for H3094, the Open Carry with Permit bill, was cleared yesterday, Wednesday, March 17, 2021, during a 7 1/2 hour session of the South Carolina House of Representatives. A total of 46 amendments to this bill were originally filed with a 47th filed today. Many of those bills were withdrawn by the representative who filed the amendment, some were voted by voice to table the amendment, some were voted by roll-call vote to table, and five (5) amendments were adopted. I will attempt to summarize below as well as answer a few questions about what this means and what happens going forward.
I have attempted to color code the adopted/tabled amendments with green meaning adopted and red meaning tabled. Black is either withdrawn or deemed out of order (not germane to the bill). Apologies to those who may be red/green color blind. I have also created documents with JUST the adopted amendments (<-link) and JUST the tabled amendments (<-link) to make it a little easier to see what was going on.
- Amendment 1 - adopted
- Amendment 2 - withdrawn
- Amendment 3 - withdrawn
- Amendment 4 - tabled
- Amendment 5 - adopted
- Amendment 6 - withdrawn
- Amendment 7 - withdrawn
- Amendment 8 - withdrawn
- Amendment 9 - withdrawn
- Amendment 10 - withdrawn
- Amendment 11 - withdrawn
- Amendment 12 - withdrawn
- Amendment 13 - withdrawn
- Amendment 14 - withdrawn
- Amendment 15 - withdrawn
- Amendment 16 - withdrawn
- Amendment 17 - withdrawn
- Amendment 18 - withdrawn
- Amendment 19 - withdrawn
- Amendment 20 - tabled
- Amendment 21 - withdrawn
- Amendment 22 - withdrawn
- Amendment 23 - withdrawn
- Amendment 24 - withdrawn
- Amendment 25 - withdrawn
- Amendment 26 - tabled
- Amendment 27 - withdrawn
- Amendment 28 - withdrawn
- Amendment 29 - withdrawn
- Amendment 30 - withdrawn
- Amendment 31 - adopted
- Amendment 32 - ruled out of order
- Amendment 33 - tabled
- Amendment 34 - adopted
- Amendment 35 - adopted
- Amendment 36 - withdrawn
- Amendment 37 - tabled
- Amendment 38 - tabled
- Amendment 39 - withdrawn
- Amendment 40 - ruled out of order
- Amendment 41 - ruled out of order
- Amendment 42 - tabled
- Amendment 43 - tabled
- Amendment 44 - withdrawn
- Amendment 45 - adopted
- Amendment 46 - tabled
- Amendment 47 - adopted (3/18/21)
So, what happens next? H3094 passed the third reading today, so It will get sent to the Senate for consideration. It will now have to make its way through the Senate. At first reading, it will get referred to the Judiciary Committee. Judiciary will refer it to a subcommittee. The subcommittee will have to review it and for it to progress it will have to have a favorable vote from the subcommittee and will go back to the full Judiciary for consideration. If it gets a favorable vote from the full Judiciary Committee, it will go to the full Senate for a second reading and debate. IF the Senate President schedules to takes it up for the 2nd reading expect a ton of amendments to be debated just like what happened in the House Wednesday.
If at any point, the Senate changes the bill AT ALL from what the House sent to the Senate, it then has to go BACK to the House for consideration. Depending on whether or not the House agrees with the changes it's either ratified or starts an official process to try to reconcile the differences. Here is the flow chart for how a bill becomes an Act (law) in South Carolina.
Once the bill is agreed to by BOTH chambers of the legislature, then it's ratified and sent to the Governor for signature. At that point, it becomes law and will go into effect as designated in the bill. H3094 would go into effect sixty (60) days after being signed by the Governor.
The proposed Constitutional Carry amendment for H3094 was tabled, BUT the stand-alone Constitutional Carry bill (H3096) is scheduled for its second reading and debate in early April. April 10th is the crossover deadline - the deadline for bills to be sent to the other chamber for consideration this session - so it's going to be a tight deadline to get Constitutional Carry considered by the Senate since the Senate didn't even get their own Constitutional Carry bills heard by a subcommittee.
So, what does that all mean? It means that we HAVE to get pressure on our Senators to pass Constitutional Carry! Don't let up! Call, write, email, text, visit in person!