Senate Bill 11 is still making its way through the houses of the Texas Legislation this session with so much misinformation that it warrants some discussion. Just recently, one college professor I spoke to about the proposed law became almost hysterical. He said he didn't want all those teenagers on his campus running around with guns. He didn't want to hear that his reasoning didn't even vaguely resemble the law under consideration.
SB11 addresses allowing licensed CHL holders to carry on campus. In Texas that means 21-year-old or older, or active military, who establish the residency requirement, pass a background check for criminal activity (more than a Class C misdemeanor) or psychiatric treatment, who have taken the class, passed the written test, demonstrated handgun proficiency, and paid for their license to carry a handgun concealed on campus. That did not include a bunch of teenagers wielding AK47's by my understanding.
Why might a non-criminal adult want to carry on a campus?
Most Texans have the UT of Austin massacre somewhere in their mind, but that incident was in 1966. A look at the last 15 years in the United States shows 21 campus gun incidents that resulted in more than one death or injury and did not include campus police. Those 21 incidents resulted in 81 deaths and 92 injuries that could have been mitigated if the people on campus could have been armed.
Now some campus police commanders have said that might result in more single-incident occurrences of gun shots on campus as potential sexual assault victims protect themselves by shooting. I, personally, do not see the downside of that and will be quite happy to have a decrease in the number of successful sexual assaults on Texas college campuses. But that's a different blog.
If you have a few minutes, call your representatives and senators to let them know you support making college students who have a CHL not be sitting ducks on our campuses.