The South Carolina Senate voted today to begin debating H3594, known as the "South Carolina Constitutional Carry/Second Amendment Preservation Act of 2023" on Wednesday, January 24, 2024.
If you'd like to watch the process, the Statehouse live streams chamber video, which you can watch/listen to on your phone or computer at this link. The session begins at 1 PM.
What to Expect
This is going to take time and there will be multiple amendments to the bill submitted, debated, and voted on. Expect some Senators to do a good deal of grandstanding & submitting frivolous amendments.
If ANY of the amendments are voted to be added to this bill and the bill, with amendments, passes the Senate, the bill will then have to go BACK to the House (where it's already passed) for a vote to "concur" or "not concur" with the amendments. If the House votes to concur, the bill gets ratified and goes to the Governor for signature. If the House votes to NOT concur, then a message is sent to the Senate and they vote to either go forward without amendments or they insist that the bill go into "conference", which is basically like arbitration. In simple terms, selected persons from the House and Senate hammer out a compromise on how the bill should read. It then either "dies" in conference committee or the committee comes up with a compromise and they send recommendations back to the House and Senate to then be voted on for ratification again.
I fully expect amendments to be adopted and for the bill to end back up in the House for a vote to concur.
Sherra, thank you for keeping up with these changes and posting messages for our members to see.