The College Fix

One of the most newsworthy pieces of legislation this session is the bill which would legalize concealed handguns on campus. Unfortunately, the discussion is rife with blatant misconceptions, red herrings and outright lies about what is at stake.

The bill will permit any student, staff or faculty member who has a Texas Concealed Handgun License to carry firearms inside a campus building. Currently, licensees are allowed to carry almost anywhere off-campus (including the streets and sidewalks of a college campus, as long as they do not enter a building). To obtain a CHL, the applicant must complete a 10-hour course and pass a written test, a live-fire qualification test and both federal and state background checks, along with other requirements. Many argue the training and qualification standards are insufficient and concealed handgun licensees should be subjected to equal or greater training than law enforcement officers.

The reason police officers spend so many hours training is simple: Their regimen consists of preparing for duties and responsibilities besides the use of lethal force, which constitutes a minor part of the complete curriculum. Additionally, the legal duties and limits for use of deadly force are completely different between police and CHL holders. A concealed handgun licensee can only legally reveal his firearm and/or use deadly force for self-preservation, as shown in Texas Penal Code Sections 9.31 and 9.32. There are many provisions and limits as to how a licensee must conduct himself or herself in a defensive situation, and they are outlined in the 10-hour CHL course. In an emergency situation, the duty of law enforcement is to run into the chaos, whereas a CHL holder is obligated to run away if possible. Licensees have no power to perform the duties of police, and you would be hard-pressed to find any incidents where a CHL holder ran around acting like a vigilante.

It is also important to note that the live-fire CHL qualification is nearly identical to the police qualification. Unfortunately, there can never be enough training to fully prepare for a deadly encounter no matter how rigid the requirements are, and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong. However, the Texas CHL requirements present a reasonable minimum standard of competency for citizens to effectively deal with the most common self-defense situations. In fact, the Texas CHL requirements are among the strictest in the nation.

The primary purpose of the campus carry bill is not to serve as a deterrent or weapon against school shootings like Virginia Tech; it’s to help prevent law-abiding citizens from becoming victims. We all know that campus is a statistically safe place. Unfortunately, the area surrounding campus is a different story. Those who live off-campus and must walk or bus through relatively unsafe areas in order to get to school will benefit greatly from this bill.

The anti-carry lobbyists can skirt around the issue all they want, but they will never concede to the uncomfortable truth that “Gun Free Zones” are flawed by nature. While such imaginary borders make people feel safe, there is a distinct difference between feeling safe and actually being safe. Did a zero-tolerance weapons policy dissuade Colton Tooley from bringing his rifle into the PCL last semester? Anyone who was on campus Sept. 28th knows the answer to that question.

While there is no magic solution to improving campus safety, campus carry provides members of the UT family with an option for individual protection while on campus. In support of this proposition, no peer reviewed study has found campus carry detrimental to public safety. If these conclusions aren’t enough, you can draw your own using many publicly-available government statistics on the subject, such as the DPS CHL conviction reports, university Clery Act crime reports and FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Perhaps if concerned citizens compared the campus crime rates between the 71 schools that permit campus carry and those that don’t, their ruffled feathers would be soothed a bit.

Kory Zipperer is a psychology senior at the University of Texas at Austin. This column originally appeared in The Daily Texan.

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