Texas House committee approves bill allowing firearms at colleges
The Texas Senate has already passed a bill allowing handguns on college campuses. Now the House is poised to consider its own measure.
The House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee voted 6-3 along party lines Tuesday to send House Bill 937, by state Rep. Allen Fletcher, R-Cypress, to the full House. The bill allows licensed handgun owners to carry a concealed weapon on college campuses, a controversial proposal that has been criticized by some high-ranking university officials.
University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven wrote a letter to lawmakers in January expressing his concern that allowing guns on college campuses “will lead to an increase in both accidental shootings and self-inflicted wounds.”
McRaven and others have suggested that students with guns might intimidate classmates and professors to the point of affecting their freedom of speech.
“If you’re in a heated debate with somebody in the middle of a classroom, and you don’t know whether or not that individual is carrying, how does that inhibit the interaction between students and faculty?” McRaven asked at a Texas Tribune event in February.
Meanwhile, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp has said he isn’t concerned about allowing guns on campus because he trusts teachers and students “to work and live responsibly under the same laws at the university as they do at home.”
Fletcher’s campus carry bill mirrors legislation by state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, that passed the Senate this month. It’s the second measure approved by the House committee to loosen state gun laws, following a measure to allow licensed handgun owners to carry their weapons openly in public that passed the committee last week. The committee heard public testimony on both bills this month.
“Most people who study or work on campus don’t live there. They drive, they walk or take public transportation from somewhere else and may have to travel through less than safe areas,” Fletcher told the committee. “Licensed individuals should be able to protect themselves during that commute.”
The campus carry bill allows universities to carefully regulate the storage of handguns in dormitories and leaves rules in place that restrict handguns in kindergarten-through-12th-grade educational facilities, bars, hospitals and churches even if they’re on campus. Private colleges have the option to opt out of allowing handguns on campus — a provision some say should also apply to public institutions.
Because only those 21 years or older can obtain a concealed handgun license in Texas, most underclassmen still won’t be able to bring guns to campus, Fletcher said.
At the crux of the debate is whether allowing guns on campus makes students more or less safe.
Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher, 20, was shot to death last year in Isla Vista, Calif., told the committee this month that the bill “makes the average day on campus more dangerous.”
“For most, [college] is the first time away from home — a vulnerable time in their lives confronted by academic pressures, relationship problems and experimentation with alcohol and drugs,” Martinez said. “Adding guns to that mix just doesn’t make sense.”
At the same hearing, Suzanna Gratia Hupp, a former state representative whose parents were killed in the 1991 mass shooting at Luby’s restaurant in Killeen, spoke in favor of the campus gun measure.
“If I’m a madman that wants to rack up a big body-bag count and beat the last guy’s body-bag count, I’m not going to go to a [National Rifle Association] convention or the dreaded gun show,” she said. “I’m going to go where the Legislature has said people can’t protect themselves.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 10:20 AM with the headline "Texas House committee approves bill allowing firearms at colleges."