Austin, TX – March 18 – The legislators and gun-control activists who incessantly parrot the claim that Senator Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury) is pandering to Baylor University (the largest employer in his district) by exempting private colleges from his “campus carry” legislation (SB 11) are clearly hoping voters won’t remember that the language exempting private colleges originated in campus carry legislation by former Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio), whose district encompassed the state’s fifth-largest public university but no large private universities.

During the Wednesday, March 18, floor debate on Senate Bill 11, Senator Rodney Ellis (D-Houston), remarked to Senator Birdwell, “It is interesting that you would put this in public universities—in other people’s districts—but not private, when the largest employer in your district is a private university.”

This is a favorite talking point among opponents of the bill, but it ignores the fact that the opt-out language for private universities originated in Senator Wentworth’s committee substitute to his 2009 campus carry bill (SB 1164). Senator Wentworth included the same language in his 2011 campus carry bill (SB 354), and Senator Birdwell repeated it in his 2013 bill (SB 182). Because Senator Wentworth’s district encompassed the town of San Marcos—home to Texas State University—but did not include any large private universities, there is no evidence that the language is intended to create a carve-out for Baylor or any other individual institution.

Madison Welch, Southwest regional director for Students for Concealed Carry, commented:

Opponents hope to derail this bill by pushing the false narrative of a “double standard,” but the reality is that the ability of private colleges to operate free of many of the restrictions placed on public colleges is fundamental to the existence of private colleges. When you consider that private colleges have wide latitude to require church attendance, enforce morality codes, and place restrictions on students’ freedom of speech, it makes sense that those same institutions would be allowed to restrict the rights of concealed handgun license holders on campus. If that is a double standard, it’s the same double standard that always exists between private property and public property. There is nothing unethical or unusual about allowing private property owners to set their own policies but requiring state-funded colleges to honor state-issued licenses.

The double-standard narrative is one of two popular talking points among opponents of campus carry. The other is that campus carry would place a heavy financial burden on Texas colleges. For example, the University of Houston recently claimed it would need $3 million for the first year and $1.2 million for each subsequent year, to build and staff secured storage facilities to house the guns of concealed handgun license (CHL) holders living in on-campus dorms.

Ignoring the fact that Senate Bill 11 does not mandate secured storage facilities and would allow UH to continue its current policy of requiring CHL holders living in dorms to store their handguns in their locked vehicles parked on campus, the university’s cost estimate is beyond absurd. The number of UH dorm residents with concealed handgun licenses can be estimated using statistics from the University of Texas at Austin.

According to Austin NBC news affiliate KXAN, only 2.5% of the students living on campus at UT-Austin are 21 or older. According to the UT-Austin website, the university has an on-campus housing capacity of 6,956. If we take 2.5% of 6,956, that’s 174 on-campus residents who are 21 or older. Because 9.5% of UT-Austin students are foreign nationals, we’re looking at about 157 who are eligible for a Texas CHL. If we use the rate (1.3%) at which Texans age 21-23 are licensed to carry a concealed handgun, to estimate how many of those 157 students are CHL holders, we can calculate that there are approximately two CHL holders living in on-campus housing at UT-Austin.

According to a 2013 article in the Houston Chronicle, UH has a dorm capacity of 8,008 students, which is just 15% greater than that of UT-Austin. Assuming that the demographic makeup of UH is comparable to that of UT, we can estimate that UH has between two and three CHL holders living in on-campus dorms (2.4 using the exact percentages from UT; 2.6 if we don’t discount for foreign nationals). This means the University of Houston claims to need between $400,000 and $1.5 million per year per handgun.

Welch quipped, “The university could save at least fifty percent by buying each of the CHL holders a house to live in.”

CONTACT:

Madison D. Welch, Southwest Regional Director, Students for Concealed Carry (SCC)
madison.welch@concealedcampus.org

SCC Board of Directors: organizers@concealedcampus.org

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ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY — Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus.

Shannon Watts’ organization Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America has recently launched an all out attack against campus concealed carry.

But can you trust her? Is she credible?

She claims that campus carry will make campuses less safe and has even bemoaned the push in several states to allow campus carry. One of the states she mentioned in this “push” is Colorado.

We find this claim that campus carry in Colorado is something new very curious.

Colorado has allowed campus concealed carry for more than ten years with Colorado State University allowing it since 2003. In fact, in a decision three years ago, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the state protected right to concealed carry on all of Colorado’s public university campuses. Furthermore, we recently defeated a bill to ban campus concealed carry in that state as well as a ballot initiative to do the same.

We also question her statement that campus concealed carry is something women don’t want.

Katherine Whitney, a third year law student led the charge to defeat the Colorado bill. A poll by the Denver Post showed that 86% of respondents favored campus concealed carry.  Even Shannon’s own daughter Abigail has attended Colorado State.

So which is it Ms. Watts? Do you not know the law you are lobbying against? Or is it that campus concealed carry isn’t as bad as you claim?

If the University of Texas System honestly believes that Texas Senate Bill 11, the “campus carry” bill authored by Senator Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury), would cost (http://is.gd/YzFo7U) the system $39 million over six years, why did the system’s flagship university—UT-Austin, which serves more than 51,000 students—submit a fiscal note claiming that it expects to incur zero cost associated with the bill? An article (http://is.gd/m2JdQe) in the February 26, 2015, edition of the UT-Austin student newspaper The Daily Texan, states, “According to UT-Austin’s fiscal note, which estimates expenses associated with campus carry, the policy would not cost the University any additional funds.”

The article quotes UT-Austin spokesman Garry Susswein as saying that dorm residents in need of secured firearms storage would be expected to bear those costs themselves. This begs the question: If UT-Austin, the largest university in the system and the second largest university in the state, would not incur any notable costs as a result of Senate Bill 11, where would the purported $6.5 million annual cost be incurred? The article explains:

Most significantly, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center estimated it would require $22 million dollars to increase staff size and training for its police department and to install security systems, such as card readers, UT System spokeswoman Jenny LaCoste-Caputo said. “It’s clear that there are inherent safety risks in a medical setting that present specific challenges, such as medical equipment, the presence of chemicals held under high pressure, safety concerns for patients and providing necessary storage for handguns that doesn’t currently exist,” LaCoste-Caputo said in an email. UT-Dallas, UT-El Paso and UT-Rio Grande Valley have also requested additional funds to accommodate campus carry if the bill were to pass. Combined, the institutions requested about $630,000 for security measures.

Given that on-campus housing is the only location where Senate Bill 11 would allow universities to regulate the storage of handguns but that the bill would allow universities to continue to prohibit handguns in any facility operating as part of a licensed hospital, why would MD Anderson—which offers no on-campus student housing and comprises primarily hospital facilities—spend money to install handgun storage facilities? Furthermore, why would allowing licensed concealed carry in non-hospital teaching and administrative buildings necessitate the installation of card readers or the hiring of additional police?

If carrying a handgun in close proximity to “chemicals held under high pressure” poses such a safety risk, why has MD Anderson thus far been content with only the security offered by an honor-system-based “gun-free” policy? Now that they’ve announced to the world’s terrorists that their facilities are rife with ready-made IEDs, won’t they need to implement these security measures regardless of the final disposition of Senate Bill 11?  SCC Southwest Regional Director Madison Welch commented, “When an institution that has taken no steps to mitigate the dangers posed by the illegal possession of firearms claims to need tens of millions of dollars to mitigate dangers posed by the lawful possession of a firearms, that tells me that the administrators are less concerned with security than with pushing their own political agenda or padding their institution’s coffers.”

CONTACT:
Madison D. Welch, Southwest Regional Director, Students for Concealed Carry (SCC)
madison.welch@concealedcampus.org

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ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY — Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus.

RELATED: http://tinyurl.com/scc-oped-aas | http://tinyurl.com/scc-oped-dmn | http://tinyurl.com/txscc-why-campus-carry

Austin, TX – February 22 – During the 2011 Texas Legislative Session, Senator Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) announced on the Senate floor that, according to the administrators of colleges in his district, then-pending legislation to legalize the licensed concealed carry of handguns on Texas college campuses would cost those institutions millions of dollars in increased insurance premiums. That claim was quickly refuted (http://is.gd/t3CvDt) but not before the fabricated specter of an “unfunded mandate” succeeded in derailing the bill in question. In light of this history, it’s no surprise that college administrators, again aided by Senator Ellis, are once again warning of expenses that exist only in their imaginations.

According to an article (http://is.gd/YWO9wX) published in the Sunday, February 22, edition of the Houston Chronicle, Texas’s public colleges believe that Senate Bill 11—the “campus carry” bill—would cost them an aggregate of $47 million over six years. Not surprisingly, most of that purported cost would be borne by campuses in Senator Ellis’s own district. Reportedly, $22 million (approximately 47%) would be needed by the on-campus police department at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, for “the installation of gun safes and lockers, additional administrative personnel and to fund ‘de-escalation’ and ‘judgment’ training for staff and on-campus security.” That’s $6.5 million per year, over the initial six years, for an institution (http://is.gd/hFPTly) that serves fewer than 6,500 trainees (mostly graduate students and post-doctoral residents and researchers), that offers no on-campus housing, and that would (under SB 11) retain the right to prohibit guns in any facility functioning as part of a licensed hospital.

The University of Houston System, which also operates primarily in Senator Ellis’s district, claims it would spend $3 million in the first year and $1.2 million each year thereafter, to “create, maintain, and staff secured weapons storage facilities in nine dormitories.” A cursory review of publicly available statistics from the University of Houston System suggests that the entire UH System houses fewer than 4,800 students in dorms, meaning that—based on the rate (http://is.gd/oAAcj9) of concealed handgun licensure among persons of typical undergraduate age (18-23)—the university system would be spending that money to secure fewer than two-dozen handguns per year (the actual number would likely be much lower due to the fact that the vast majority of dorm residents are freshmen and sophomores, most of whom are too young to obtain a concealed handgun license). Madison Welch, Southwest regional director for Students for Concealed Carry, commented, “If the University of Houston System can’t figure out a way to secure handguns for less than $50,000 per handgun per year, they have much bigger problems than campus carry.”

Nothing in Senate Bill 11 (http://is.gd/1DnM1m) would require universities to create or staff “secured weapons storage facilities.” The bill simply states that institutions of higher education would be allowed to “establish rules, regulations, or other provisions concerning the storage of handguns in dormitories or other residential facilities that are owned or leased and operated by the institution and located on the campus of the institution.” Based on the wording of that provision, universities could presumably require the handful of dorm residents who possess a valid concealed handgun license (CHL) to check their firearms at the campus police station before turning in for the night. Or UH could do what the University of Colorado System does (http://is.gd/9rWw1b) and offer only one gun-friendly residence hall per campus (the UH System appears to have only two campuses with dormitories). Alternatively, UH could simply continue its current policy (per state law) of allowing CHL holders living in on-campus housing to store their guns in their cars. As for the need to provide additional training for staff and on-campus security, Madison Welch noted:

For more than nineteen years, it has been legal for a CHL holder to park her car in a campus parking garage, take a leisurely stroll through campus, and stop to read a book under one of the trees in the middle of the campus quad, all while carrying a concealed handgun. Yet we’re expected to believe that letting that same license holder carry her concealed handgun into a campus building would necessitate millions of dollars in additional training for the same security officers who didn’t need any additional training to protect the parking garage, the sidewalk, or the quad. Either universities are fishing for funding for security improvements they should have implemented decades ago, or they and their friend Senator Ellis are once again relying on fuzzy math and fuzzy ethics to derail good legislation.

CONTACT:

Madison D. Welch, Southwest Regional Director, Students for Concealed Carry (SCC)
madison.welch@concealedcampus.org

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ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY — Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on SCC, visit ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus.

RELATED: http://tinyurl.com/scc-oped-aas / http://tinyurl.com/scc-oped-dmn / http://tinyurl.com/txscc-why-campus-carry

Recent coverage of the policies enacted at an Arkansas shooting range operated by firearms instructor and speaker Jan Morgan have prompted us to address the issue of discrimination within the firearms community.

The policies referenced suggest discrimination and denial of self-defense training by this business based on race alone. As students, we are similarly denied the option of armed self-defense with no justification and we cannot condone policies within our own community which do the same to others.

Students for Concealed Carry represents all students regardless of race, creed, age, gender identity or political affiliation and we believe all should have the right to self-defense.

ABOUT:
Students for Concealed Carry is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization of college students, faculty, staff, parents and concerned citizens who believe that concealed carry licensees should be afforded the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that they enjoy off campus.

The nation’s oldest and largest college student Second Amendment advocacy group recently formed a tax-exempt entity.

As of September 10th, 2014, Students for Concealed Carry Foundation (SCCF) became recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity, and donations to SCCF are tax-deductible. The sister organization, Students for Concealed Carry (SCC), will remain a separate entity, continuing its focus on legislative advocacy. SCCF’s focus will be to fund high-cost, high-benefit work such as litigation and legal research.

Reid Smith, Director of Development and SCCF board member released a statement to donors outlining the purpose is “to protect the civil rights of legally permitted college students, faculty, and staff who choose to carry concealed firearms on campus; doing so through scholarly research, education of the public, and engaging in legal action when necessary.”

The group plans to do this in part by publishing information in an accessible format which will allow any student or parent to determine the legality of campus carry any college campus in America.

Secondly, the group plans to fund research that will help educate policy makers, college students, and the public at large on campus carry. “Specifically, SCCF will focus on generating educational materials and providing assistance to college students who seek to educate their fellow students, decision makers, and the public through events such as scholarly debates and presentations,” said Smith in the statement.

SCCF also pledges to fund litigation to enforce laws protecting the concealed carry rights of college students. In Regents of the University of Colorado v. Students for Concealed Carry, which ultimately legalized campus carry in Colorado, the Colorado Supreme Court found that public colleges and universities are not above the law. Smith said that SCCF believes “that laws relevant to that case are mirrored in roughly 25-30 states across the country.”

Over the years, Smith has found that the largest barrier to the college students’ ability to advocate for campus carry in a public forum is college administration. Smith claims the “problem is endemic across the country.”

“I’ve met with campus police chiefs who have threatened academic blackmail against students that participated in SCC protests,” Smith said adding that he’s also met “deans that have threatened to blackball students from graduate programs due to their participation.”

As such, SCCF will seek to educate students on their First Amendment rights, giving them the confidence to properly express their ideas and advocate for campus carry as well as intervene on behalf of the student using legal action if necessary. SCC has been victorious in litigation  against colleges in the past. They’ve worked closely with the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education, (theFIRE.org) and plan to continue that relationship.

Contact:
Crayle Vanest
Director of Public Relations
Students for Concealed Carry Foundation
Crayle.Vanest@concealedcampus.org

Zachary Zalneraitis
Director of Public Relations
Students for Concealed Carry
Zachary.Zalneraitis@concealedcampus.org

Students for Concealed Carry Foundation is a nationwide, non-partisan student organization. The group’s mission is to perform scholarly legal and public policy research, to educate the public concerning issues of civil liberties pertaining to firearms at postsecondary education institutions through conferences and other media, and to engage in legal action when necessary to fulfil these objectives.

On August 5, 2014 a diverse group gathered at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. for the third Students for Concealed Carry National Conference. College students and faculty, firearms instructors and attorneys, and supporters of all walks of life gathered to discuss the issue of concealed carry on campus.

Several panels spoke on topics from campus activism to firearms education, but the most memorable moments came as victims of violence recounted their stories and brought home the reality of what actual people face every day.