University of Texas students dispute how to respond to campus carry.
The situation may be scary, but it will not be dangerous
As an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, I understand why many students are concerned by the state’s new law legalizing the licensed concealed carry of handguns in college buildings. Most of my fellow students aren’t old enough to buy a handgun, much less carry one. When they hear that some of their peers will soon be allowed to carry guns on campus, once the law takes effect next August, they foresee a never-ending cavalcade of assaults, accidents, suicides and threats. However, based on all available evidence, those predictions are wrong.
Currently, more than 150 U.S. college campuses allow “campus carry,” as it has come to be known. After allowing campus carry for a combined total of more than 1,500 semesters (an average of more than five years), not one of those colleges has seen a single resulting assault, suicide attempt or fatal accident. There isn’t a single report of campus carry leading to even a weapon being brandished in anger, much less a death.
Misconceptions about campus carry abound. Although the bill passed by the Texas Legislature doesn’t change who can carry a gun and doesn’t change the laws at fraternity houses, bars, tailgating events, off-campus parties, or anywhere else students are likely to consume alcohol, the notion that “campus carry” means giving guns to the immature and the inebriated is ubiquitous in speeches and editorials opposing it. Although the new law has no bearing on a student’s ability to own a gun, opponents predict an increase in student suicides, completely ignoring the fact that 90 percent of suicides occur in the victim’s home (at UT-Austin, 95 percent of students over the age of 21 live off campus) and the fact that a concealed handgun license (CHL) holder can already store a handgun in a car parked on campus.
For nearly 20 years, Texas law has allowed licensed adults age 21 and above to carry concealed handguns in locations such as movie theaters, shopping malls, churches, restaurants, grocery stores, banks, state offices, public museums, municipal libraries and even the Texas Capitol. Concealed carry is already legal in the parking garages and public outdoor areas of college campuses, and Texas colleges have been required since 2013 to let licensed students, faculty and staff keep handguns in locked automobiles. Almost two decades after allowing licensed concealed
carry into virtually every nook and cranny of society, Texas still hasn’t devolved into a bloody, lawless wasteland.
Most of my fellow Longhorns probably never think about concealed carry when they’re shopping or dining on “The Drag,” a row of retail stores and restaurants near campus. Students have no reason to think about it because the people legally carrying guns there pose virtually no threat to public safety. Statistically, Texas CHL holders commit violent crimes at approximately one-fifth the rate of the general population.
A Texan is significantly more likely to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a CHL holder.
Nobody can deny that gun violence is a major problem in America; however, there is a big difference between owning a gun and having a concealed handgun license. If all Americans committed murder at the same rate as Texas CHL holders, the U.S. would have a murder rate comparable to the famously low rates in England, Australia and Canada.
Anyone who believes that gun owners need to compromise should embrace Texas’ CHL program as the ultimate compromise. In exchange for undergoing a licensing process that includes training, testing and extensive state (Texas Department of Public Safety) and federal (FBI) back- ground and fingerprint checks, CHL holders are afforded the right to carry guns in public. That is a true compromise — the kind in which both sides give a little and both sides get a little.
Students who disagree with the new law have every right to protest it, and state colleges should make no attempt to silence those protests, no matter how unseemly. However, any postsecondary student should be able to look at these facts and see the high probability that, as is currently the case in Utah, Colorado, Mississippi and Idaho, campus carry will be a total nonissue in the Lone Star State.