CHARLESTON — A bill that would allow people with permits for concealed handguns to carry on college campuses has multiple amendments pending this morning.

House Bill 2519, creating the Campus Self Defense Act, was moved to third reading with the right to amend Tuesday in time for today’s Crossover Day deadline, when house and senate bills have to be passed and sent to the other body.

The Campus Self Defense Act would allow a college student with a valid concealed weapon permit to carry a pistol or revolver on a public college campus, including buildings and facilities. State colleges and universities have policies that prohibit carrying weapons on campus.

The bill includes multiple exemptions where handguns cannot bring brought, including organized events taking place at stadiums and arenas with more than 1,000 attendees, campus daycare facilities, campus police buildings, and facilities with metal detectors and security. It would require colleges and universities to provide storage lockers for firearms and can charge fees for storage.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Shott, R-Mercer, has 10 amendments pending to HB 2519. A similar bill introduced last year never made it out of Shott’s committee, and last week Shott fought an effort to fast track the bill before it had a chance to be reviewed by the House Finance Committee.

“What I have done is gone through a number of the other states that have similar acts and tried to extract from those provisions that I thought made the bill less objectionable,” Shott said.

According to a fiscal note submitted by the Higher Education Policy Commission, it would cost the state’s colleges and universities as much as $11.6 million in the first full year once the law would be enacted.

One of Shott’s amendments would strip out the number of attendees that would trigger an event being allowed to prohibit firearms. It also opens up the number and types of events that could prohibit firearms, such athletic competitions, classes, practices, or other permitted and scheduled uses.

“It expands the exclusion zones in which the firearms are prohibited,” Shott said. “It was negotiated by (West Virginia University) which obviously has bigger venues, but for a lot of the smaller schools that 1,000 does not offer them that same flexibility.”

John Bolt, senior executive director for communications at WVU, said in a statement on Twitter that the university does not support the bill, but had worked with lawmakers to allow for limitations.

“Given the likelihood this legislation will move forward with the contemplated exemptions, West Virginia University is focused on preserving the exemptions that are in the Committee Substitute for House Bill 2519, as it is considered by the Legislature,” Bolt said

Another amendment would prohibit college students under the age of 21 from being allowing to carry a concealed weapon on campus even with a permit. It would also require students to complete enhanced firearms training. Shott said several states with similar legislation put age restrictions on the right to concealed carry.

“There is an issue with 18-year-olds,” Shott said. “All the studies that have been done on intellectual and emotional maturity show that there is a gap… between about 15 and 24. This recognizes that students in that age group do not necessarily have the best impulse control and best judgement.”

The state’s largest higher education institutions — WVU and Marshall University — believe that issues involving firearms should be decided by their boards of governors.

“We have always maintained that, in matters relating to its campuses across the system, the Board of Governors is in the best position to make decisions,” Bolt said. “The University has consistently indicated that it prefers current law and local control as it relates to House Bill 2519.”

“I am opposed and remain opposed to guns on campus,” MU President Jerome Gilbert in a statement last week. “This is a very serious issue and one that I believe should be made by our Board of Governors.”

Other amendments would prohibit firearms in college public transportation, allow college sand universities to suspend or expel a student who discharges or brandishes a weapon in a prohibited area or event, and add athletic conference events to the list of prohibitions.