I confess to being something of an unlikely fan of state Rep. Charlie Collins of Fayetteville, surely one of the most reviled members of the Arkansas General Assembly.
He is reviled — let’s make clear — not because of any repugnant quality, at least that I can see. Nor is he reviled on any widespread basis. He is reviled mainly by liberals and higher-education people.
That’s almost entirely because of Collins’ obsessive interest in trying to permit concealed guns on college campuses, which tends to strike a lot of people as a bad, indeed dangerous, idea.
But from the time several years ago when Collins invited me to Fayetteville to join him at a town-hall discussion on a Saturday at the public library, and then invited me back for a debate on income taxes, which he abhors and I don’t so much, I’ve found him uncommonly thoughtful, analytical, intelligent, well-meaning and publicly accountable.
He is staunchly conservative but not without a capacity for pragmatic leadership, such as on the health-care task force that he co-chaired. In that role, he led the way counter-intuitively toward embracing the private-option form of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. It has saved the state budget, rural hospitals, lives and conceivably the Asa Hutchinson administration.
I got him on the phone the other day to talk eventually about his biennial lightning rod of a bill for guns on college campuses. But first we wandered into a theoretical and yet valuable discussion about income taxes.
It’s always a good exercise to have your long-term assumptions challenged, such as mine that the personal income tax is the fairest tax of all because it takes only as a rising percentage of what you earn — unlike, say, a sales tax, which takes a flat percentage of what both the poor man and rich man have no choice but to buy, meaning food and clothing and transportation.
Collins sees it differently. He says you tend to get less of whatever you tax. I counter that I have yet to meet anyone who quit a good-paying job or turned down a raise for fear of the income taxes.
Collins’ point is more theoretical. It’s that the old farm economy relied heavily on land taxes. It’s that the old manufacturing economy relied heavily on plant and equipment taxes. It’s that the new information economy relies on brainpower or personal skill and initiative and is less site-dependent or equipment-dependent. The income tax, he argues, is a counterproductive way to tax — using the example he cited — a self-employed newspaper columnist working out of his home. Better to tax him on the car he chooses, or the suit, or the pinot noir.
As it happens, Collins will probably soon enjoy the opportunity to advance and conceivably even impose his taxation views. He resisted Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s income-tax cut exclusively for low-income persons, favoring instead, and of course, across-the-board cuts. But he went along with the governor after extracting a promise from Hutchinson to cut taxes on higher incomes in two years after the report of a tax-reform task force on which I’m assuming Collins will serve.
He’ll probably be a co-chairman, unless there’s an objection to letting him hold again the same prominence he held on the health-care task force.
Now, regarding guns on college campuses: Collins passed in 2013 a bill permitting faculty and staff members who have permits to carry concealed weapons to do so on campus. But passage required that he add a provision allowing college boards of trustees to opt out. All did.
So now he is back with a bill to forbid any campus opt-out, and even the Republican governor, a former spokesman of sorts for the NRA, is saying he rather likes the status quo with the local option.
I asked Collins if maybe he had a good friend who worked on a college campus and was bugging him for the authority to carry his licensed weapon to work, or if, failing that, he could give me another explanation for his abiding interest in guns at college.
So, as is his style, he answered.
He said he had read the Secret Service report seeking to analyze the typical modern American mass shooter. He said the report compiled a portrait of an unstable male who senses some perceived injustice — from an employer, a professor or a woman, usually. But the unstable man does not typically get a gun and kill instantly.
Instead he plans his move in a way that will force people to consider the supposed injustice against him. He will take time to write a manifesto, perhaps on social media, or to compile a video. And, to assure that he gets maximum attention, he will look for a place to do his shooting that will provide for the most mayhem with the least resistance, such as a busy college campus where he knows guns are forbidden.
All that a responsible legislator can ever hope, Collins says, is to confront a problem and make it less a problem. If the shooter had to consider the possibility that he might encounter resistance on a college campus — that someone might shoot back — the likelihood of tragedy might be reduced, or so Collins calculates.
I don’t happen to agree with him on income taxes and I don’t happen to agree with him on the deterring effect of concealed-carry authority for faculty and staff on college campuses.
But I have no doubt he believes what he says in both cases and can and will account willingly and competently for those beliefs if anyone cares to extend him the opportunity.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.