One opponent of Texas Senate Bill 354, which would legalize licensed concealed carry (of handguns) on Texas college campuses, has resorted to blatantly false statements to make his case.  Faced with a dearth of fact-based evidence supporting his position, Senator Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) has conjured up a fiscal boogeyman, telling anybody who’ll listen that the passage of SB 354 would cost state colleges millions in additional insurance premiums.  But like most fairy tales, this one is borne out of pure fantasy.

On April 7, Senator Ellis lashed out against SB 354 on the floor of the Texas Senate.  Addressing the bill’s author—Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio)—Senator Ellis proclaimed, “I’m told by the community colleges it’s going to raise their insurance costs for liability insurance, despite the fact that under your bill you say they have no liability.  But you can’t stop the insurance rates from going up.  I’m told that one of my community colleges—they think it’ll cost a million dollars.”

Apparently accepting Senator Ellis’s claim at face value, Senator Mario Gallegos, Jr. (D-Houston) immediately withdrew his support from the bill.  A few weeks later, Gallegos told the Texas Tribune, “What’s embedded in this bill, and is not being told, is the unfunded mandate that this bill produces.”

Although Senator Ellis did not name the community college to which he referred, other sources clearly indicate that he was referring to Houston Community College.  The HCC board of trustees recently passed a resolution claiming that SB 354 would create a “fiscal burden” for the institution, and Dan Arguijo, spokesman for Houston Community College, recently told the Texas Tribune that HCC’s annual insurance premiums would likely rise by as much as much as $780,000 to $900,000.

Senator Wentworth and others immediately questioned these claims, pointing out that SB 354 provides immunity to colleges, that the fiscal note attached to SB 354 makes no mention of rising insurance costs, and that none of the 71 college campuses outside of Texas that currently allow concealed carry on campus have reported a rise in insurance premiums.  W. Scott Lewis, Texas legislative director for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, asked, “On what basis are we expected to believe that college campuses will become the first and only locations in Texas to experience higher insurance rates as a result of honoring state-issued concealed handgun licenses?”

These lingering questions prompted Robert Greene—a concealed handgun instructor, former police officer, and licensed insurance agent—to do a little investigating of his own.  Mr. Greene noted, “In all my years of writing commercial insurance for businesses, schools, churches, and the like, I have never had an underwriting questionnaire ask or even allude to whether or not the insured allows CHL holders to carry on the premises.  I inquired of my underwriters, and not one indicated that this had ever been an underwriting question.”

When Mr. Greene contacted Senator Ellis’s office, he was told that Austin Community College is among the institutions reporting that its insurance premiums would increase.  But when Mr. Greene contacted ACC Environmental Health & Safety Coordinator Robert Rogers, the person in charge of purchasing liability insurance for the college, Mr. Rogers was adamant that he had neither spoken to anyone regarding the school’s insurance premiums nor indicated in any way that those premiums would increase if SB 354 were to pass.

Mr. Rogers even went so far as to point out that, per the Texas Tort Claims Act of 1969, colleges and universities would be immune from liability for the actions of a CHL holder because a concealed handgun license is issued by the state, not the college.  He then drew a comparison to state driver’s licenses and the fact that, because colleges must let licensed drivers use the roads passing through campus, colleges are immune from liability for the actions of drivers on campus.

Mr. Greene got a similar response when he spoke to Phillip Dendy, director of risk management for the University of Texas.  Mr. Dendy pointed out that that the University of Texas rarely purchases liability insurance because the university is a state entity and, for all intents and purposes, insured by the State of Texas.  He concurred with Mr. Rogers’ assessment that the Texas Tort Claims Act would provide immunity to colleges and universities.

Mr. Greene then contacted United Educators Insurance Company, the insurance carrier for Houston Community College, and spoke with Marketing Manager Chris Robinson.  Mr. Robinson agreed that, in light of the immunity offered by both the bill itself and the Texas Tort Claims Act, there should be no expectation that colleges will experience higher insurance premiums if SB 354 passes.

These conversations, coupled with his personal experience in the insurance business, led Mr. Greene to conclude that Senator Ellis’s claims are unfounded.  W. Scott Lewis concurred, stating, “At best, Senator Ellis has failed to do his due diligence before repeating the dubious claims of a few college officials.  At worst, he has resorted to lies to try to justify an unjustifiable position.”

Click here to learn more about campus carry in Texas.
 

Why does Ogden oppose campus carry?

By Madison D. Welch
The Eagle (Bryan/College Station, TX)

April 27, 2011

On April 7, state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, took the Senate floor to explain why he opposes attempts to legalize licensed concealed carry of handguns on Texas college campuses.

Not once during his 15-minute speech did he suggest that legalizing “campus carry” might make Texas colleges less safe. Instead, he argued that because foreign nationals and most individuals under the age of 21 are ineligible to obtain a Texas concealed handgun license, it would be unfair to allow concealed carry at Texas colleges.

Of all the misguided reasons to deny trained, licensed adults the means to protect themselves on college campuses, the suggestion that doing so would be unfair to anyone ineligible to obtain a concealed handgun license is possibly the most bizarre argument to come out of this already bizarre debate.

Sen. Ogden’s desire to handicap license holders in the name of equality sounds eerily like a cross between Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical short story Harrison Bergeron, in which a future society ensures the equality of the masses by handicapping any individual who possess an ability not shared by everyone, and the teachings of Karl Marx.

Does Sen. Ogden’s desire for equality extend beyond college campuses? Is he bothered by the fact that current state law allows some people (trained, licensed, carefully-screened adults 21 and older) but not others (children, the mentally ill, convicted felons, etc.) to carry concealed handguns at locations such as churches, movie theaters, shopping malls, office buildings, grocery stores, restaurants, banks and the Texas Capitol?

Is he equally concerned that most high schools allow licensed students over the age of 16 to drive to school but do not allow the same of unlicensed students under the age of 16?

Continuing with his theme of fairness, Sen. Ogden went on to suggest that pending campus carry legislation would unfairly require public colleges to allow concealed carry on campus, while allowing private colleges to create their own firearms policies.

Does Sen. Ogden also believe that public colleges should be allowed the same freedom as private colleges to incorporate religious doctrine into core curriculum?

Perhaps Sen. Ogden thinks private colleges only exist so that students have the option of paying more for a higher education. But in reality, private colleges exist so that students have the option of attending schools not bound by the same restrictions as public colleges.

The state of Texas doesn’t allow any other state institution to restrict licensed concealed carry. From municipal governments to state agencies, the law of the land is that state institutions must honor state-issued licenses. So why does Sen. Ogden think that state colleges deserve special consideration? Why does he believe that a public college’s right to self-govern trumps a private citizen’s right to self-defense?

The facts supporting campus carry are undeniable. Outside of Texas, 71 public colleges have allowed licensed concealed carry on campus for an average of more than three years. Not one has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides) or a single resulting gun accident.

Throughout Texas, one person out of every 55 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun (among persons of typical college age, the rate is closer to one person out of every 300). Yet a Texan is 20 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder.

Every peer-reviewed study on the subject of licensed concealed carry — including studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center — has concluded that licensed concealed carry cannot be shown to lead to an increase in either violent crime or gun deaths.

The vice president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, the largest police union in Texas, recently dismissed concerns about campus carry impeding police and said that his organization would support the legalization of licensed concealed carry on Texas college campuses.

In light of those facts, what possible reason could Sen. Ogden have, beyond his bizarre views on fairness, for opposing campus carry? What legitimate reason could anybody have?

* Madison Welch is a student at Texas A&M University and the assistant Texas legislative director of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

Click here to learn more about campus carry in Texas.
 

A few months ago, Kilgore College President Bill Holda harshly condemned attempts to legalize licensed concealed carry on Texas college campuses.  But after taking some time to learn about the issue, he’s had a change of heart.

Kilgore College President changes tune on concealed carry

KETK NBC NEWS
Tyler, TX

KILGORE — After learning more about concealed handguns on college campuses, Kilgore College President, Dr. Bill Holda changed his tune on the issue.

The bill stalled again in the Texas senate today.

But if it does pass, Holda is not against it.

READ THE REST AND WATCH THE VIDEO AT KETKNBC.COM.

Click here to learn more about campus carry in Texas.

 

Some have suggested that Texas Senate Bill 354 should be amended to allow public colleges to “opt out” of allowing concealed carry on campus. However, the state law (TX PC §46.03[a][1]) prohibiting licensed concealed carry at Texas colleges already includes a provision allowing any institution of higher education to create a “written regulation or written authorization” allowing concealed carry on campus. Texas colleges currently have the option to allow concealed carry on campus, yet none have chosen to do so.

Rewording the law so that colleges have the choice to prohibit concealed carry, rather than the choice to allow it, isn’t an improvement at all; it’s just an underhanded attempt to maintain the status quo.

Even if some colleges and universities were to independently decide to allow licensed concealed carry on campus, this would simply create an unmanageable patchwork of laws across the state. License holders would never be entirely sure on which campuses they were allowed to carry handguns and on which campuses they weren’t. Even worse, this patchwork of laws would be ever-changing, based on who happened to be the university president or the system chancellor or on the board of regents at any given time.

Opponents of campus carry misleadingly suggest that campus carry legislation seeks to unfairly limit the ability of universities to self-govern. In reality, the Texas Education Code and the Texas Government Code already contain hundreds of pages of restrictions on public colleges, regulating everything from why universities can and can’t deny admission to what universities must include on their websites. Therefore, there is nothing unfair or unprecedented about insisting that state-funded colleges honor state-issued licenses.

State colleges and universities have no more right to self-govern than do cities or state agencies. If cities can’t prohibit concealed carry and state agencies can’t prohibit concealed carry, why do public institutions of higher education deserve special consideration?

RELATED: The Case for Campus Carry in Texas
 

This past Tuesday, I engaged in what has become my weekly (and sometimes biweekly) ritual of donning a suit, driving to the Texas Capitol, hunting for a parking space, showing my concealed handgun license to the state troopers guarding the entrance (so that I can bypass the metal detectors), and marching off to the darkest recesses of the statehouse’s underground extension, to lobby for campus carry.  But unlike most of my Capitol trips, Tuesday’s held the promise of something special—a committee hearing.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee was scheduled to hear testimony on Senate Bill 354, Senator Jeff Wentworth’s campus carry bill.  We’d heard that, unlike the House committee we addressed the week before, the Senate committee intended to limit the amount of time allotted to each witness. So I deviated from my standard operating procedure and wrote out my testimony beforehand.

Our sources indicated that witnesses would probably be allowed about three minutes each, at the discretion of the committee chair.  In my practice runs, I’d been able to get through my prepared testimony in about five minutes, so my plan was to watch the first few witnesses and determine how strictly the committee chair was enforcing this three-minute time limit.  If it was being strictly enforced, I could do some quick editing and trim my comments to fit.

At the commencement of the hearing, the committee chair told us he would prefer that witnesses try to keep their comments to about two minutes.  Though two minutes is shorter than three, I was relieved that he phrased it as a polite request, not an inflexible command.  And after sitting through several testimonies, most of which went at least a minute or two over the two-minute mark and none of which got so much as a word of warning from the committee chair, I felt confident that my five-minute testimony would not be a problem, especially in light of the fact that it was intended to represent the 44,000 members of SCCC.

When my name was called, I was fully confident that all would go according to plan.  But then, as I began delivering SCCC’s official testimony, the committee chair got up and left the room, leaving the vice chair in charge.  And about three minutes into my speech, she decided she’d heard enough and cut me off.  Nobody was cut off before me, and as soon as I stepped down, the committee chair returned to his seat and resumed letting witnesses prattle on to their hearts’ content.  But my testimony was cut short.

It was a frustrating bit of bad luck made all the more frustrating because of what exactly the committee didn’t hear.  I’d just laid out SCCC’s official position and was about to offer an example of why we hold to that position, when I was told I’d said enough.  This is what I didn’t get to say:

Our opponents chastise Texas legislators for pursuing this legislation despite the recommendations of the Virginia Tech Review Panel.  But the Virginia Tech Review Panel never looked at Texas, and it never looked at the colleges that already allow concealed carry on campus.  Instead, the panel based its recommendation against allowing concealed carry on campus on comments from students who said they’d be afraid to sit next to someone carrying a gun and on interviews with police officers in New York City—a metropolitan area that does not allow concealed carry.

Our opponents suggest that, because we do not agree with the crime victims on their side of the debate, we are ignoring crime victims altogether.  But in truth, there are victims on both sides of this debate.

For a little insight into this issue, I ask you to look back at October 22, 2007.  For me, that date will always represent the day Students for Concealed Carry on Campus transitioned from an idea into a movement.  That was the first day of our first annual empty holster protest, an event that has since become the signature of our organization.  But for one concealed handgun license holder, a young woman by the name of Amanda Collins, that day holds a much different significance.

October 22, 2007, was the day she was brutally raped in a parking garage at the University of Nevada.  Because the laws in Nevada are very much like they are here in Texas, she was legally prohibited from carrying her concealed handgun on campus.  So, unable to carry the one measure of personal protection she truly desired, she did her best to follow all of the school’s recommended security procedures—she parked in a well lit area close to her classroom and walked back to the parking garage with a group of friends.

After reaching the parking garage and bidding her friends goodbye, she walked carefully toward her car, watching for anything suspicious.  Suddenly, a man lunged from the shadows and grabbed her.  She quickly saw that this man did not share her respect for the university’s status as a “gun free” zone—he was carrying a handgun.

Last week, Amanda Collins told the Nevada Legislature, which is also considering a campus carry bill, that there were times throughout her traumatic ordeal when she could have put an end to it if only she’d been allowed the same means of personal protection that Nevada law allowed her virtually everywhere else in the state.  But because she wasn’t allowed that means of personal protection, she was savagely raped on a cold parking garage floor, just 300 yards from the front door of the campus police department.

So convinced is Amanda that her concealed handgun would have enabled her to prevent the assault that when I asked if I could share her story at this hearing, she offered to come to Texas and testify herself.  But rather than put her through a second traumatic hearing in less than one week, we’ve instead provided you with transcripts of the testimony she delivered before the Nevada Legislature.  I hope you’ll take the time to review Amanda’s story and see what it means to be truly defenseless.

As Texas Legislators, you have a choice.  You can allow this issue to be sidetracked by contrived, hypothetical scenarios that haven’t played out on any of the campuses where concealed carry is currently allowed, or you can look beyond our opponents’ never ending game of make believe and amend Texas law so that it no longer stacks the odds in favor of any depraved lunatic willing to ignore it.

Before I go, I want to leave you with this final thought:  The assailant who attacked Amanda Collins went on to rape at least two more women.  He was finally apprehended and convicted of these crimes after his final victim was found buried under a rotting Christmas tree in a vacant lot.  She’d been dead for almost four weeks.

News Stories:

Las Vegas Review-Journal – 03/18/11 – “Assault victim lobbies for campus gun measure”

Nevada News Bureau – 03/18/11 – “Rape Victim to Testify On Campus Carry Law”

 
Op-Eds:

The Horn – 03/21/11 – “Allow guns on college campuses”

San Antonio Express-News – 03/18/11 – “Campus concealed carry bill no laughing matter”

The Austin American-Statesman – 03/13/11 – “Want to feel safe? Start by arming yourself with facts.”

The Dallas Morning News – 03/07/11 – “Campus concerns are off base”
 

Because the San Antonio Express-News takes an approach to editing that is less like polishing an article than like throwing it into a wood chipper, I’ve decided to post my ENTIRE op-ed here.

Campus Carry is No Laughing Matter

When Conan O’Brien poked fun at the issue, I couldn’t help but laugh.  Between jokes about President Obama and Justin Bieber, the talk show host quipped, “This is weird:  Texas is reportedly going to give college students the right to carry guns on campus.  So, I guess next semester every college student in Texas is getting straight A’s.”

Even I had to admit it was a pretty good joke.  And considering the source, it was an appropriately lighthearted dig.  Sadly, late night comedians aren’t the only ones making jokes about the Texas Legislature’s efforts to legalize licensed concealed carry (of handguns) on college campuses.

Recently, editorialists and bloggers across the country jumped at the opportunity to portray Texas legislators as backward cowboys who dream of a return to the Wild West and refuse to trade in their six-shooters for cell phones.  But not surprisingly, such stereotype-based caricatures don’t reflect reality.  The 98 legislators who’ve signed on to Texas’ pending “campus carry” bills haven’t done so out of some misplaced devotion to the code of the West.  They, unlike most of their critics, actually understand the issue.

An editorial in the online magazine CollegeCandy.com asks, “Can you imagine a frat party where the guys are allowed to have their guns?  Nothing about that says ‘good idea’ to me.”  The Animal House stereotype is such an easy target that one can almost forgive the author for conflating college campuses (where students study) with college life (where students party).

But the bills in question would only affect university-owned buildings and wouldn’t change the laws at fraternity houses, which are owned by fraternal organizations and typically located off campus.  Likewise, the bills wouldn’t change the laws at tailgating events, off-campus apartments, or bars (whether on campus or off).  In short, the locations where students are most likely to drink and engage in high-risk behavior would still be governed by the same laws as before.

A Los Angeles Times editorial suggests, “A student firing back at a gunman in a crowded classroom might pose as much of a risk to his fellow students as the assailant.”  Perhaps, being from L.A., the Times editorial board deserves a pass on confusing real life with a Michael Bay film.  But contrary to what Hollywood might have us believe, real-world shootouts don’t involve 10 minutes of people diving over desks and ducking behind doorways to reload.

According to the FBI, most shootouts last less than 10 seconds.  How could 10 seconds of exchanged gunfire possibly result in more casualties than an uncontested execution-style massacre like the 10-minute shooting spree that occurred at Virginia Tech?

A guest columnist for the Louisiana newspaper The Daily Comet sums up the feelings of the bills’ opponents by repeatedly referring to the Texas Legislature and all who support campus carry as “stupid, idiotic and dumb.”  Though attention-getting, such statements are no more factual than they are subtle.

Every peer-reviewed study on licensed concealed carry has concluded that it cannot be shown to lead to an increase in either violent crime or gun deaths.  Currently, one Texan out of every 55 is licensed to “pack heat” in such seemingly taboo locations as churches, movie theaters, shopping malls, restaurants, banks, and even the Texas Capitol, yet a Texan is 20 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by a concealed handgun license holder.  The 71 U.S. college campuses that currently allow licensed concealed carry have yet to see a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides) or a single resulting gun accident.

Joking about campus carry legislation is all well and good until you find yourself on a college campus, confronted by a madman who’s chosen to ignore the school’s “gun free” policy.  Then it’s no laughing matter.

That’s what readers of today’s edition of the San Antonio Express-News SHOULD have read.  Thankfully, the editors at The Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman do their editing with a scalpel, not a broadsword.
 

In an article posted on the Huffington Post, Robert J. Spitzer, distinguished service professor of political science at SUNY Cortland, makes the following declaration:

Repeated claims by groups like Students for Concealed Carry on Campus that they have a constitutional right to carry guns should impel them to take remedial classes in constitutional law. The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment rulings in 2008 and 2010 expressly recognized the legality of existing laws restricting gun carrying at educational institutions, among other places.

Such an uninformed statement should compel Professor Spitzer (who claims 13 published books to his credit) to take remedial classes in research and analysis.  Neither the SCCC website nor any of SCCC’s literature claims that students have a Constitutional right to carry guns.  And the Second Amendment is not a talking point used by official SCCC spokespersons.  Clearly, Professor Spitzer jotted off his entire 570-word editorial without reading so much as a single essay from Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

If he had bothered to look through SCCC’s literature, Professor Spitzer would have found all 570 words of his uninformed screed thoroughly and intelligently rebutted.  But that’s a subject for another time.
 

On February 24, 2011, the Texas A&M University chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus hosted a debated between proponents and opponents of legalizing licensed concealed carry (of handguns) on Texas college campuses. This is the uncut video of the one-hour and forty-five-minute debate.