Dive Brief:
- While concealed carry on Texas campus grounds has been legal for 20 years, a new law will make it legal for permit-holders to bring those guns into academic buildings and classrooms.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the legislature is allowing universities to create limited gun-free zones, but especially in liberal Austin, there is little support for concealed carry in any campus building — and economics professor Daniel S. Hamermesh has already resigned over the heightened danger of teaching large lecture courses under the circumstances.
- The Houston Press reports Texas Southern University has seen four shootings in the past six weeks, no mass shootings, but lethal ones nonetheless, and members of the campus community are concerned such activity will increase under the new law.
Dive Insight:
Those in favor of concealed carry legislation expanding to school buildings argue trained permit-holders will be able to protect otherwise defenseless victims in the case of a mass shooting. Opponents point to the situation at Texas Southern University and argue guns have the ability to needlessly escalate interpersonal grudges.
Texas’ law will take effect in 2016 and legislators have already said public universities have little leeway to stretch the limited gun-free zones to all or even most campus buildings. Adding to the controversy, the date the new law takes effect — August 1 — will mark the 50th anniversary of a mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin in which student Charles Whitman climbed into the campus' clock tower and shot 46 people.
California, on the other hand, has moved to ban concealed carry on school and university campuses statewide. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law last weekend, closing what the Los Angeles Times reports was considered a “loophole” in existing restrictions.