Under current law, a person who has a concealed handgun license has to be at least 21, have their fingerprints registered with the state, a background check to prove they are not a felon or have domestic disturbances in their past, and have gone through a proficiency and safety course.

These people by law can carry a concealed handgun for self defense on campus provided they remain outside buildings and no official activity is taking place outdoors (football games, etc.)

Also under current law, anyone (with a few exceptions) can keep an unloaded gun locked in their vehicle while it is parked on campus. The university might have a policy prohibiting this for employees and students, not sure. But should be allowable by guests, if I'm not mistaken.

As has been the case in the past, a bill has been introduced that would allow permit holders to enter buildings on campus with their concealed handguns.

How would you feel knowing these people who have their license to carry are in those buildings on campus? Does it make a difference for them to have the gun in a building on campus as opposed to the grocery store or a restaurant?

Details on the bill:
http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1773268&forum_id=34

I am all for concealed carry on campus, and, in fact, know of people who already do so.

I'm all for concealed carry on campus in buildings or otherwise. Of course I'm also all for open carry.

Why stop at buildings? Are athletic events (e.g. football games) still excluded? If so, why?

There was probably a reason college campus buildings were originally excluded from concealed carry. I find it a bit ironic that college campuses are the battle ground but daycares, local schools (K-12), and most government buildings are still excluded. Why? If we're going to allow guns in classrooms, then allow them at football games (no alcohol is served) and for HS teachers to carry.

During the last legislative session, there were groups on a number of campuses, including A&M and Blinn, circulating petitions in support of concealed carry on all campuses and in all locations. I asked the securoty folks at Blinn, A&M, and Sam at the time about their views, and all were against it. I didn't pursue it from there. It would be interesting to get their feedback on the proposal, as well as from law enforcement in general to get their perspectives.

Anyone looking to do harm with a gun isnt going to give a damn about the law. They will carry where they want. Why should those of us who abide be bound by rules limitting our ability to defend ourselves?

Basically these rules only keep honest people, honest.

I far as I have heard or could research, there has been few if any incidents of a CHL license holder to use his/her handgun in a murder without due cause.

The crazies and the criminals have been, and will always be, able to get a weapon to commit a crime.

Since police personnel are reactive law enforcers rather than proactive, CHL holders should be able to carry their handgun anywhere on public property and also anywhere private where the owner doesn't prohibit it.

[This message has been edited by Biggydoog (edited 1/15/2011 8:40a).]

No empirical evidence supports those claims. Only CIA trained employees assessed, eliminated, and assessed and eliminated each controlled threat at a level deemed "significant" by the operational defiinition of the study. More guns dont mean safer. Take a CHL class and tell me if youd be willing to vouge for every shot the participant on both sides of you will take in the future.

I am for concealed carry on campus.

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Anyone looking to do harm with a gun isnt going to give a damn about the law. They will carry where they want. Why should those of us who abide be bound by rules limitting our ability to defend ourselves?

Basically these rules only keep honest people, honest.

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Agree with you in theory. When I asked an A&M PD officer what he thought about it, he told me that having guns on campus would make his job tougher in the event that there was a shooter on campus. He said to picture the scenario of someone like the VA Tech shooter coming onto campus, now imagine what it would be like if the campus police come onto the scene and there are multiple people with guns drawn, who do you arrest? People lie. It's not like the shooter is going to say "Oh yes, officer, I started the whole thing" What if the other students started firing? How does the PD Officer make the choice about who to shoot if there's more than one person shooting, assuming that you have more than one person with a CHL drawing down? He said it was just too risky.

An off-campus police officer could make the same argument. It doesnt hold water.

TKDMom,
The main fifference in my mind is fewer dead bodies and the killer will already be down so there won't be a bunch of guns drawn

Nobody has answered my question. If we're going to allow them in the classroom, why not open up the entire campus 24/7? Why not let CHL holders carry into Kyle Field on Saturday afternoons? No alcohol is served?

For that matter, why not allow them in bars? If the CHL holders are responsible, what is the danger of allowing them to carry into the Chicken after the football game?

Not that anyone will believe it, but the most recent and rigorous empirical studies have found that CHL laws do not decrease crime and, in most cases, result in increased crime.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632599

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Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC (right to carry)laws are adopted.

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Not that anyone will believe it, but the most recent and rigorous empirical studies have found that CHL laws do not decrease crime and, in most cases, result in increased crime.

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I want to know what logic contributed to that finding.

So true... a study WITHOUT knowing the means under wich it was conducted is USELESS.

I got a "Market survey" call before the last election that refused to tell me who comissioned it but continually asked leading questions and then would say something like "did you know that rick perry kills babies" (joke but something negative) then would say "Does this influence your decision" ? Half of what they said was a direct quote from like the Dallas Times or some such.

The point was that by the end of the call it was clear that the point was to make me think Rick Perry was a terrible scumbag who should be in jail and isn't deserving of a vote.

Ummm...I posted a link. You could open it and read the report before dismissing it.

It took the original crime stats sets used by many CHL support groups (1977-2002), updated the data to include 2003-2006, and then ran similar (but improved) statistical models that attempted to eliminate errors and biases that were included by the previous studies.

The updated study used the same data set, similar methods, and improved statistics to arrive at a different result. If you dismiss this study out of hand due to the data or methods, you are automatically dismissing the data and methods used by previous groups that argue CHL laws decrease crime.

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Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC (right to carry)laws are adopted.

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yes, because without the RTC laws the aggrivated assault would have been murder...

very difficult to charge somebody with assault when you're dead.

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Also under current law, anyone (with a few exceptions) can keep an unloaded gun locked in their vehicle while it is parked on campus

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"unloaded" is not a requirement...

As they don't tell me what exactly this is:

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and then ran similar (but improved) statistical models

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I stick to my statement. Statistics can be derived to support any conclusion.

Further they don't actually attribute the rise of crime to CHL's. One would be far more easily persuaded that crime rates are a sign of a weak economy.

All the stats aside, do you think that because of any of those conclusions or any new laws that criminals will just think "Oh sh$% the stats say crime will go down so I may as well stop now" or "There is a new law making it harder to get guns, I may as well not even try" ?

Criminals will do what they do or think they must do. I think they must be stopped. There aren't enough law enforcement officers to cover every possible scenario so I'm all for being able to defend myself in kind as a RIGHT and choice. For the record, I don't have a CHL or a gun but if things change enough that I think I need one I am GLAD I have the RIGHT to excercise my CHOICE and not be forced in to submission by someone elses.

So long as we're clear that you're using emotion rather than reason and acknowledge that you won't simply open the link to read the report.

I'm not necessarily arguing AGAINST the CHL law because the 2nd amendment clearly gives citizens the right to have guns. But at least be intellectually honest enough to consider the consequences of such rights. It's quite likely the "more-guns = less-crime" rhetoric coming from the NRA and other pro-gun groups is based on faulty data. Even if that's true, it doesn't invalidate the 2nd amendment.

I did follow your link. It is only to the abstract, not the full document.

In the abstract are things like:

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the regression estimates presented in the report appear to be incorrect.

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It further explains that 15 people disagree with the conclusions and wrote a paper explaining their way of thinking. I often find when I follow someone elses train of though to a conclusion I would reach the same conclusion. However, when I get more info than only they provide I don't always agree.

So the real question is do I believe that 15 people or the group of people that came up with the opposite conclusion?

[This message has been edited by Allonym (edited 1/15/2011 12:33p).]

There is a link near the top for a "one-click download" for the full PDF. This paper discusses and extends the findings of a blue-ribbon panel of economists and social scientists convened by the National Research Council.

You're clearly literate but also not approaching this with an open mind, so I won't spend time reading and summarizing for you.

I'll be happy when this legislative session is over so we can go back to not hearing this argument again!

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using county-level crime data for the period 1977-2003 15 of the 16 NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existin

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We improve and expand on the report’s county data analysis by analyzing an additional six years of county data as well as state panel data for the period 1977-2006.

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Most people will automatically reject any conclusions by a group of people this bad at arithmetic...

Reading comprehension...

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In 2005, the National Research Council (NRC) offered a critical evaluation of the “more guns, less crime” hypothesis using county-level crime data for the period 1977-2003. 15 of the 16 NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existing research was inadequate to conclude that RTC laws increased or decreased crime.

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NRC analyzed data from 1977-2003.

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We improve and expand on the report’s county data analysis by analyzing an additional six years of county data as well as state panel data for the period 1977-2006.

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*emphasis added*

An additional six years of county data would add data through 2009. The state panel data was for 1977-2006, which is an increase of only three years. You've confused the county and state data sets.

*edited for typos*

[This message has been edited by retinag (edited 1/15/2011 2:22p).]

I interpreted it as written

if you interpreted it as written, you would have no problem with the math. you misinterpreted it

I had tried the "one click download" but it kept reloading that page. 6 clicks later now and I finally got a PDF to download.

I'm glad you didnt paraphrase as you clearly have an opinion on the subject and your words would have leaned that way.

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No empirical evidence supports those claims. Only CIA trained employees assessed, eliminated, and assessed and eliminated each controlled threat at a level deemed "significant" by the operational defiinition of the study. More guns dont mean safer. Take a CHL class and tell me if youd be willing to vouge for every shot the participant on both sides of you will take in the future.

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Concealed carry on campus, like many other issues, is what one of my favorite bloggers calls a "Category 3 debate." Basically, every human who sets foot on campus can be put into one of three categories for the purposes of this debate:

1. People who will never shoot another person on campus. I'd say most everyone on this board and in the population at large fits into this category. No matter what, MOST CHL holders will never use their guns except in self-defense.

2. People who will shoot another person on campus NO MATTER WHAT. These are your Virginia Tech-type killers who will not be deterred by any law, probably seek death anyway and cannot be stopped by a law against concealed carry.

3. This category is people who would not normally shoot other people on campus, BUT FOR the fact that they're allowed to carry guns legally on campus.

The entire debate hinges on that third group: let's say in any given year, 400,000 different people enter a Texas A&M building for some reason. 2.25% of Texans have licenses, so that works out to about 9,000 total licensees who are put in the position to commit a crime.

Of those 9,000, how many are going to commit a gun crime using a concealed weapon that they would NOT have committed if it were against the law? And if you weigh that number against the ability of the students and faculty to defend themselves against Category 2 shooters, as well as theft and sexual assault (which is much more prevalent on college campuses than people want to admit), do CHLs come out ahead?

Consider this. Of the twelve public schools that have allowed concealed carry on campus, there has not been a single incident of any type of gun violence at any of them since it has been allowed.

There is absolutely no reason to think that it won't make us safer. Let's enact this law and allow students and faculty to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.

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Consider this. Of the twelve public schools that have allowed concealed carry on campus, there has not been a single incident of any type of gun violence at any of them since it has been allowed.

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Consider this. Not a single person has been struck by lightning on TAMU campus since they installed the lightning detection system either!

[This message has been edited by cplstansfield (edited 1/15/2011 5:11p).]

The problem with generalizing about concealed carry on campus is that there are two vastly different scenarios which could be imagined.

The first is an active shooter in the middle of Sbisa at noon. In this situation, I would not necessarily want multiple CHL holders to draw their weapon from different locations around the dining room. There would be too much of a risk of hitting an innocent bystander and too much confusion to the CHL holders and to the authorities when they arive as to who was the original shooter.

The second scenario is a person leaving Evans library at midnight and walking by that little snack bar on their way to their vehicle in Central Campus garage. No one else is around, and a criminal jumps out of the shadows and threatens to rape the late night studier. In this situation, I can totally get behind allowing a student to carry.

Perhaps the CHL classes need to have a greater focus on when to draw a weapon or not in crowd situations. The same situation applies at Walmart or the mall as does in a lecture with 200 students.

Or, I would propose allowing concealed carry on campus, but automatic disciplinary suspension for anyone who draws their weapon. Maybe this would cause students to make a more careful decision about using their weapon if it meant not graduating or getting their Aggie Ring if they were found to be in the wrong.

The problem with not allowing me to carry on campus is that I walk or ride my bike home from campus. I have no car sitting there with my handgun in the glovebox. Once I cross Texas, University, or George Bush I am no longer on campus, but I am still forced to be unarmed for the remainder of my walk home. It's not like I can hide my gun in the bushes every day. By taking away my defense on campus, the law is also taking away my defense off campus and walking into my home.

To the person who advocated open carry: Are you insane? Do you want to be a shooter's first target in some sort of Virginia Tech situation? The bad guy is going to take out the people with the guns first!!!!

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To the person who advocated open carry: Are you insane? Do you want to be a shooter's first target in some sort of Virginia Tech situation? The bad guy is going to take out the people with the guns first!!!!

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Why can't an individual recognize this for himself and decide not to carry openly? If a person's decision to open carry vs. concealed carry only affects that person, why does it matter to you?