Here is the third and final mock-shooting experiment conducted by News 8 Dallas-Fort Worth (WFAA), to test the response of Texas CHL/LTC holders.
Like the previous two scenarios, this one demonstrates the importance of proper training; however, this one also demonstrates the importance of thinking twice before interjecting yourself into an unknown situation.
WFAA, the Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate, put four Texas CHL/LTC holders to the test in mock active-shooter scenarios. Watch the videos to see how they did.
In this video, members of the Modern Language Association chant, “No guns, no cops, no violence!” during the MLA’s January 8 anti-campus carry rally in Austin. Apparently, these professors not only oppose letting trained, licensed adults protect themselves on campus; they also oppose letting trained, commissioned peace officers protect people on campus. Their proposed solution to violence is to make everyone on campus as vulnerable as possible.
AUSTIN, TX – Members of the Modern Language Association, concerned that Texas will soon allow the licensed concealed carry of handguns in university buildings, have decided to examine the new law, study the twenty-year history of licensed concealed carry in Texas, research the experiences of the many U.S. colleges that currently allow concealed carry in campus buildings, and publish a detailed analysis of the issue and its potential impact on—Just kidding; they decided to build a book fort in front of the Texas Capitol.
On Friday, January 8, members of the Modern Language Association (MLA)—which happens to be hosting its annual convention in Austin—will join with members of Gun Free UT to host an anti-campus carry march to the Texas Capitol, followed by a rally in which the protesters will build a “symbolic gun exclusion zone” out of books, on the Capitol steps. Selected members will then enter this no-guns-allowed book fort to read from texts that they believe can only be taught in a “gun-free environment.”
Antonia Okafor, Southwest regional director for Students for Concealed Carry (SCC), commented, “It’s appropriate that the highlight of this anti-campus carry protest will be a symbolic gun-free zone, since symbolic gun-free zones are exactly what these protesters hope to preserve at Texas universities.”
The basis for this protest is the dubious belief that licensed concealed carry on Texas college campuses will inhibit freedom of speech and the free exchange of controversial ideas. Completely ignored by the protesters is the reality that dozens and dozens of U.S. college campuses currently allow licensed concealed carry in campus buildings and that, after allowing campus carry for an average of more than five years, not one of those campuses has reported a single incident of a license holder using a handgun in a threatening manner. The protesters also ignore the successful history of licensed concealed carry throughout Texas—a Texan is significantly more likely to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder, and if all Americans (including children and the elderly) committed murder at the same rate as Texas CHL holders, the U.S. would have a homicide rate on par with the famously low rates in Australia, Canada, and England.
In a January 6 op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, Diana Taylor, second vice president of the MLA, demonstrates that experience with the types of literary studies that fill MLA’s academic journals doesn’t translate into expertise on sociopolitical issues. After commending the “thoughtful” report of the campus carry policy working group at UT-Austin, Taylor blatantly contradicts the findings of that report by claiming (without citing a source), “Laws that allow licensed handgun carriers to bring concealed handguns into buildings on campuses have proved to actually increase the likelihood of violence in general.”
The report of UT-Austin’s admittedly anti-campus carry working group states, “Our examination of states that already have campus carry revealed little evidence of campus violence that can be directly linked to campus carry, and none that involves an intentional shooting…We found that the evidence does not support the claim that a causal link exists between campus carry and an increased rate of sexual assault. We found no evidence that campus carry has caused an increase in suicide rates on campuses in other states.” The report goes on to state, “We reached out to 17 research universities in the seven campus-carry states…Most respondents reported that campus carry had not had much direct impact on student life or academic affairs.” The working group’s findings are consistent with the preponderance of peer-reviewed studies on licensed concealed carry—including a 2015 study from Texas A&M University—which have found that concealed carry cannot be shown to lead to an increase in violent crime.
Texas has seen enough silly protests from both sides of the campus carry debate. The time for theatrics has passed; now is the time for a serious discussion about the implementation of the law. That is why Students for Concealed Carry has asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to include campus carry in any special legislative session called during 2016. The state’s campus carry law should clearly define the authority of universities to regulate concealed carry on campus, so as to finally put an end to a debate that grows messier and costlier with each passing day.
AUSTIN, TX – Although the committees and working groups tasked with developing campus carry policies at Texas universities have thus far eschewed such obvious nonstarters as banning licensed concealed carry in classrooms and banning concealed carry campus-wide during final exams, major universities such as the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Texas, Texas Tech, and the UT Medical Branch at Galveston are considering policies that would prohibit concealed carry by large segments of the campus community, prohibit concealed carry in large areas where concealed handguns present no unique threat to public safety, or require license holders to carry handguns in a manner that conflicts with basic firearms training. For this reason, Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) calls on Governor Greg Abbott to include an order to clarify the state’s campus carry law—specifically, the scope and intent of the “reasonable rules” university presidents are allowed to make—in any 2016 special session of the Texas Legislature.
At some point between now and April, the Texas Supreme Court will issue its highly anticipated ruling on whether the Texas Legislature has adequately funded the state’s public K-12 schools. If the court finds against the state, that ruling may force a special legislative session this summer. In that event, Students for Concealed Carry believes that it would be fiscally prudent for Governor Abbott to include in his special session call a mandate to clarify the state’s impending campus carry law.
Antonia Okafor, Southwest regional director for SCC, explained the logic behind SCC’s request, stating, “With activists on both sides of this debate already lining up plaintiffs to sue their respective universities if the campus carry policies enacted by those universities aren’t to their liking, it’s highly probable that the threatened lawsuits would cost the state far more than the roughly one million dollars required for a thirty-day special session. If it’s possible to avoid those costly lawsuits by ironing out the law’s ambiguities during a special session that has to happen anyway, the state would be fiscally irresponsible not to seize that opportunity.”
When Tarrant County Community College in Fort Worth lost a 2009 lawsuit to Students for Concealed Carry, the court ordered TCC to pay $240,000 to SCC’s lawyers. Because that payment was in addition to the fees TCC paid its own attorneys, it’s reasonable to estimate that that single lawsuit cost the college close to half a million dollars. It’s also reasonable to estimate that unresolved ambiguities in the state’s campus carry law could result in a half-dozen or more lawsuits against state institutions.
AUSTIN, TX – In a Dec. 22 post on The Dallas Morning News‘s “Trail Blazers Blog,” journalist Tom Benning reports that the campus carry task force at Texas Tech University has proposed allowing faculty and staff to designate their offices as gun-free zones and prohibiting concealed carry at large recital halls and theaters when those venues host performances.
Students for Concealed Carry recently issued two lengthy statements (#1, #2) denouncing a similar gun-free-offices policy proposed by the campus carry working group at the University of Texas at Austin, as a violation of both the letter and intent of Texas Senate Bill 11. Subsequently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a formal opinion stating, “No provisions within S.B. 11 authorize a president or chief executive officer to delegate this authority to individual professors, and reading S.B. 11 as a whole suggests that the Legislature did not intend to allow such piecemeal regulation of handguns on campus.”
In one area, the proposals of Texas Tech’s campus carry task force exceed those of the University of Texas at Austin’s campus carry working group—a proposed ban on licensed concealed carry at recital halls and theaters. Benning’s blog post quotes Texas Tech Provost Lawrence Schovanec, the leader of the TTU task force, as saying, “What’s so different from going to where you have volleyball game [sic] with maybe a thousand in attendance, or having a performance in a large performance hall with a similar number of people?” The fact that Schovanec even has to ask this question leads us to question whether he was the best man to lead Texas Tech’s task force.
If venue size was the Texas Legislature’s primary concern in prohibiting licensed concealed carry at high school, collegiate, and professional sporting events, why didn’t they simply prohibit concealed carry at venues seating more than 1,000 people? Why did they choose to allow concealed carry in a 50,000-seat arena when it’s hosting a concert but choose to prohibit concealed carry in that same 50,000-seat arena when it’s hosting a sporting event? The answer is obvious—the legislature believes that sporting events are fundamentally different from other large-venue events.
Stage plays, ballet recitals, and student film festivals seldom play host to intense interscholastic rivalries. The question of mixing guns with team rivalries, not the question of mixing guns with large venues, was almost certainly what prompted the Texas Legislature to prohibit licensed concealed carry at sporting events but allow it at concerts, movie theaters, municipal theaters, etc.
SCC Southwest Director Antonia Okafor noted, “UT students aren’t likely to show up at a Texas Tech production of Les Misérables with ‘Hook ’em Horns’ painted across their bare stomachs, and Tech students aren’t likely to rush the stage after a particularly good orchestra performance and tear down the lighting truss, so where does Tech’s campus carry task force get off claiming that sporting events and theatrical performances are practically the same thing?”
AUSTIN, TX – Students for Concealed Carry is grateful to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for his commitment to preserving the integrity of the state’s new campus carry law; however, we feel that the media is focusing on the wrong aspect of the attorney general’s recently issued opinion on the matter.
In the wake of Attorney General Paxton’s official opinion, issued Dec. 21 in response to a request by Senator Brian Birdwell, author of the campus carry law, the media has fixated on the portion of the opinion that states, “If an institution placed a prohibition on handguns in the institution’s residential facilities…it would effectively prohibit license holders in those facilities from carrying concealed handguns on campus, in violation of S.B. 11.”
SCC agrees with that opinion; however, our research and calculations suggest that any policy regulating licensed concealed carry by dorm residents will affect no more than a half-dozen license holders on any given campus, including the state’s largest universities. Furthermore, the campus carry working group at the University of Texas at Austin has shown that campus carry policies can be drafted in such a way as to address the unique security concerns posed by dorms but not create an outright “prohibition on handguns in the institution’s residential facilities.”
The policy proposed by the UT-Austin working group would apply only to dorms, not on-campus apartments; would apply only to dorm rooms, not the common areas of residential halls; would apply primarily to dorm residents and staff, not visiting families; and would allow a licensed staff member living in a university dorm to keep a handgun in his or her dorm room as long as the gun is locked in a gun safe (there are many quick-access gun safes available). It is the opinion of SCC that all that is need to bring this policy into compliance with the law is to develop a safe-storage system for the tiny handful of licensed students who live in dorms (e.g., allowing them to store their guns at the university police headquarters, as many universities around the country already do).
With that said, we believe that Attorney General Paxton’s opinion does cast serious doubt on another policy proposed by the UT-Austin working group. Responding to Senator Birdwell’s question as to whether a university could allow individual professors to designate individual classrooms as gun-free zones, the attorney general writes, “No provisions within S.B. 11 authorize a president or chief executive officer to delegate this authority to individual professors, and reading S.B. 11 as a whole suggests that the Legislature did not intend to allow such piecemeal regulation of handguns on campus.” SCC believes that this opinion casts serious doubt on the working group’s proposal that “[the] occupant of an office to which the occupant has been solely assigned and that is not generally open to the public should be permitted, at the occupant’s discretion, to prohibit the concealed carry of a handgun in that office.”
SCC has repeatedly (EXAMPLE 1, EXAMPLE 2) argued that UT-Austin’s proposed gun-free-offices policy would violate both the letter and intent of Texas Senate Bill 11, and we feel that Attorney General Paxton’s opinion corroborates our position. We now hope to see Senator Birdwell or another state official request an attorney general opinion on whether the law permits a university to require that a semiautomatic handgun carried by a license holder on campus be carried with an unloaded chamber, as would be mandated by the policies proposed by the UT-Austin working group. We believe that this proposed empty-chamber policy, like the proposed gun-free-offices policy, would violate both the letter and intent of SB 11.
CORRECTION: This statement originally stated that the dorm policy proposed by the UT-Austin campus carry working group would allow dorm residents to keep guns in gun safes; however, the provision allowing guns to be kept in gun safes would apply only to dormitory staff and to residents of university apartments.
AUSTIN, TX – We at SCC have made our opposition to UT-Austin’s proposed empty-chamber requirement loud and clear. As we’ve repeatedly stated, carrying a semiautomatic handgun with an empty chamber flies in the face of the standard training offered by every U.S. firearms school, police academy, and military branch. In fact, we know of only one professional fighting force that regularly carries semiautomatic handguns with empty chambers—the Israeli army (hence, this method of carry has come to be known as “Israeli” carry). However, before proponents of UT-Austin’s proposed empty-chamber requirement begin pointing to the Israeli army as proof that this method of carry works, they should take a look at the totality of the Israeli method and ask themselves whether this is truly the method they want to see implemented at Texas colleges.
Unlike all U.S. methods of carry, which were designed with the goal of using minimal force (or, preferably, only the threat of force) and incurring zero collateral damage (i.e., dead or wounded bystanders), the Israeli method was developed as an assassination technique and later adapted for rapidly stopping terrorist attacks by suicide bombers and the like. Proper aiming is made difficult, nay, impossible by the need to draw the weapon and immediately rack the slide (as opposed to the U.S. method of drawing the weapon and immediately bringing the sights into line with the shooter’s dominant eye). The idea behind the Israeli method is to fire as many shots as possible as quickly as possible, without pausing to aim, hesitating to assess whether the threat has been neutralized, or stopping to consider where missed shots may strike. In many ways, it bears more resemblance to the shooting style adopted by U.S. gang members—including sometimes firing with the handgun held in a sideways cant—than to the shooting techniques used by U.S. law enforcement.
In a June 2003 article for Soldier of Fortune magazine (it’s not one of the periodicals we subscribe to, but we tracked down a copy), police/SWAT firearms instructor Jim Shults breaks down the Israeli shooting method, which was a short-lived fad in the U.S., and explains its many shortcomings. Here are a few notable excerpts:
All of the U.S. techniques teach that you draw a loaded and chambered pistol and – depending on the instant threat – either fire or present the pistol as a threat with your finger off the trigger (which can be reached and functioned in a tiny fraction of a second if necessary). The Israeli method trains that once you draw, you immediately begin firing – and fire a lot. There is no gun-presenting to show some idiot 20 feet from you that you want him and his friends to go away. Nope, when you draw “Israeli-style” you start blasting. Remember, you will fight like you train. If trained to immediately fire after the draw, odds are great you will do just that.
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No U.S. technique or U.S. instructor teaches that you shoot every time you draw unless you see an instant and deadly threat which can instantly reach you; a guy with a knife 25 feet away from you is not a draw-and-shoot threat.
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In all U.S. firearm schools (military, SpecOps, law enforcement and civilian), aiming is taught. This is not precise target-aiming. We are talking about getting the front and rear sights on the target and firing, if necessary. With very little training this can be accomplished nearly instantly. Okay, it’s the heat of a life and death battle and you start shooting with the nifty Israeli instinctive-shooting training (not aiming). Assuming you survive and win the fight, try to explain to a judge and jury, with the “encouragement” of the prosecutor and police officers, that those shots you sprayed over the landscape smashing into cars, buildings – and bystanders – were the result of you taking a “Mossad” course on how not to aim your pistol.
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It takes no talent to fire and hit a bad guy 3 feet away, unless you still have to chamber a round. Up-close a blind man can get hits, but just 4 or 5 yards can make all the difference in any real accuracy in the “crap your pants”-pressure of a gunfight.
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As John Farnam states when talking about aiming, “You can never shoot fast enough to make up for misses in a gunfight.” One of the basic elements taught in American schools is to draw quickly and shoot slowly (relatively) because only hits count.
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The Israeli slide-manipulation method is a disaster in waiting. I guarantee you that in a once-in-a-lifetime, “holy-crap”-panic, self-defense encounter, the odds of you drawing your empty pistol, rotating it, pulling it to your shoulder while precisely gripping the rear of the slide with your fingers, properly chambering and getting it running is – Mission Impossible! Real life isn’t a gun range; there is no rehearsal. What if you miss the grip and thrust out a pistol with nothing in the chamber? What if you don’t get a good enough grip on it to fully rack the slide (short-racking)? Sure, none of us have ever done that. What about a misfeed and you thrust the pistol out with a stoppage? In the heat of battle you will not notice the problem until you try to fire; whoops, too late. Besides, what kind of idiot brings an “unloaded” pistol to a gunfight?
AUSTIN, TX – This past Friday, Students for Concealed Carry released a lengthy statement explaining why two of the rules proposed by the campus carry policy working group at the University of Texas at Austin are ill-conceived and contrary to both the letter and intent of the state’s new campus carry law (Texas Senate Bill 11). However, even at 1,500 words, that release wasn’t long enough to describe every problem inherent in those two proposals.
As detailed in SCC’s previous release, the working group’s proposal that university employees be allowed to designate their offices as criminally enforceable “gun-free” zones would ensure that any concealed handgun license holder required to visit a “gun-free” office as part of his or her daily duties as a university employee, research assistant, or teaching assistant would be unable to lawfully carry a concealed handgun on campus. This proposal is all the more egregious in that it would bestow upon academics a right not enjoyed by any other state employee—the right to arbitrarily criminalize licensed concealed carry on state property. UT’s campus carry working group, which comprises mostly university employees, has decided that university employees are deserving of a right not granted to state agency employees, county employees, municipal employees, state legislators, or any member of the state’s executive branch, including the governor and lieutenant governor.
As explained in SCC’s earlier statement, the working group’s proposal that any license holder carrying a semiautomatic handgun be required to carry the gun without a round in the chamber conflicts with the generally accepted best practices taught by every firearms school, police academy, and military branch in the nation. This proposal is ostensibly intended to prevent the accidental/negligent discharge of a license holder’s firearm; however, not one of the U.S. college campuses that currently allow licensed concealed carry has seen an accidental/negligent discharge of a holstered firearm. In fact, such incidents are virtually unheard of anywhere.
AUSTIN, TX – The final report of the campus carry policy working group at the University of Texas at Austin will go down in history as simultaneously featuring some of the finest research on the subject of licensed concealed carry on college campuses and offering two of the most poorly conceived recommendations concerning the same. Although the report’s factual research demonstrates the wisdom of placing professional academics in charge of researching an important sociopolitical issue, the report’s recommendations demonstrate the impracticality of tasking those same academics with formulating policies regarding the appropriate utilization of firearms for self-defense.
The working group recommends that “[the] occupant of an office to which he or she has been solely assigned and that is not generally open to the public should be permitted, at the occupant’s discretion, to prohibit the concealed carry of a handgun in that office” and that “if the occupant’s duties ordinarily entail meeting people who may be license holders, the occupant must make reasonable arrangements to meet them in another location at a convenient time.” This recommendation, which is clearly tailored to suit the needs of professors meeting with students during posted office hours, creates two distinct problems. The first and least of these problems is that it places any student with a concealed handgun license (“conceal” is defined, in part, as “to keep secret; to prevent or avoid disclosing or divulging”) in the uncomfortable position of potentially having to inform a professor—a professor who, by declaring his or her office “gun-free,” has publicly announced his or her opposition to campus carry—that the student regularly carries a gun to class. The second and much more serious problem is that it renders many faculty, staff, and students unable to carry a concealed handgun on campus at all (potentially conflicting with both the letter and intent of Texas Senate Bill 11, which states that a university’s campus carry policy may not “have the effect of generally prohibiting license holders from carrying concealed handguns on the campus of the institution”).
AUSTIN, TX – Although the campus carry working group’s recommendations regarding WHERE licensed concealed carry should be allowed on the UT-Austin campus are generally in keeping with the intent of Texas Senate Bill 11, the group oversteps both is members’ area of expertise and the university’s statutory authority to create “reasonable” rules, by recommending that concealed handgun license holders carry their firearms in a manner that conflicts with basic handgun training.
SCC has two primary concerns with the group’s recommendations:
