Campus carry offers protection
Spearheaded by Sen. Brian Birdwell and Rep. Allen Fletcher, Texas Senate Bill 11 marks another step in the steady march of states choosing to legalize the carry of concealed firearms on college campuses.
Despite legislative stalling and last-minute amendments, the efforts of gun rights organizations from across the state and country paid off in the removal of the statewide ban on campus carry. Contrary to the fear-heavy rhetoric from the bill’s opponents, Texas is far from the first state to allow firearms on college campuses. Campus-carry laws are already on the books for universities in Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin.
Other states have proposed campus-carry bills this year — including Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming — gaining various levels of traction in their legislatures. The recurring nature and ever-increasing support for these bills signals growing acceptance across the country. As semesters pass without incidents in states where concealed carry is allowed in campus buildings, the apocalyptic predictions of carry opponents lose credibility.
Concealed-carry prohibitions on university campuses only serve to exclude legal firearms carried by law-abiding adults who have no intention of committing a crime in the first place. As most campuses are open to the public with few access restrictions, criminals are free to enter with illegal weapons. Where campus carry is banned, victims are unable to provide armed resistance.
Perhaps the most common argument against campus carry involves doubting the maturity of the adults on college campuses. This is unconvincing, because individuals who would be allowed to carry on campus already do so everywhere else in their lives. This is not a debate over who can carry a firearm, but where law-abiding, licensed adults can carry.
There is simply no viable argument that universities are so different that the same adults who already responsibly carry off campus in their day-to-day lives should lose the option of effective self-defense merely by crossing the invisible boundary line of a college campus.