PIERRE - Opponents of a bill to loosen firearms restrictions on state colleges and technical institutes shot the measure down Friday for a second time this week.

But supporters said the fight might continue.

Both sides said the shootings this week at Northern Illinois University didn't seem to affect the votes on the bill one way or the other, and Gov. Mike Rounds said during a news conference Friday that the idea of loosening gun restrictions on campus didn't worry him.

Supporters of HB1261 fell four votes short of the majority of 18 needed to bring the bill back for debate Friday on the Senate floor. The bill died Monday in Senate State Affairs Committee, but supporters began a "smoke-out" procedure to revive it.

After the second defeat Friday, the House sponsor of the bill said the battle might resume next week, as the Legislature move into the final two weeks of its main run.

"The final gavel hasn't dropped yet. You may see that bill show up again somewhere," Rep. Tom Brunner, R-Nisland, said.

The bill would overrule existing policy by the state Board of Regents and individual colleges and technical institutes prohibiting possession and storage of guns on campuses. The schools now have the option of allowing on-campus residents to store guns in a central, locked facility. But firearms are not to be kept in dormitory rooms or carried on campus.

HB1261 would allow students, faculty and visitors to possess and carry legally held firearms on campus, although student with guns in their dorm rooms would be required to keep them locked up when they weren't carrying them.

Supporters of the bill got 16 votes - four more than needed - Thursday in the 35-member Senate in the first phase of the smoke-out. But they needed a simple majority of 18 Friday to complete the effort and open the bill for debate by the full Senate.

Instead, they got 14, to the 17 votes opposing the bill.

There were four senators missing for the vote Friday. Senate Republican leader Dave Knudson of Sioux Falls, who opposed the bill, said two of the missing senators would have been expected to vote against the bill and two for it.

Knudson said he will continue to oppose the bill if opponents bring it back.

"It just seems to me that the whole concept of allowing students to carry guns on campus is a bad one," he said.

Knudson also said the shootings at Northern Illinois University didn't seem to change any minds about the bill, which he believed would have been rejected in the Senate, anyway.

Brunner also said he doubted that the vote was affected by the Illinois tragedy. The bill could come back in another form, through a procedural process called "hoghousing," in which the language of one bill is added to the "carcass" of another bill.

"There's usually enough carcasses around," Brunner said. "So maybe we'll have another chance to beat the drums."

Brunner said he was disappointed that the Republican leadership in the Senate couldn't do more to support a bill that had already passed 63-3 in the House.

"In an election year, why would you shy away from having that bill on your immediate resume?" he said.

At his news conference, Rounds said that with the hunting tradition in South Dakota, it's understandable that college students want to have guns with them in their dormitory rooms.

Rounds raised the issue of the Northern Illinois University tragedy and speculated that a gun ban on that campus hadn't prevented the shooting.

"There may have already been a law in place that prohibited firearms," he said. "If that's the case, it didn't work."

HB1261 followed a bill introduced on behalf of the Board of Regents that would have made it a Class 1 misdemeanor to possess firearms on campus or in vehicles on campus. The bill died in committee. Currently, students or staff members who violate gun restrictions on campuses could be expelled or fired.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com