myth busters | Gun Free UT

1. Campus Carry won’t have much impact because CHL holders must be over 21 and few such students live on campus. WRONG:

Over 5000 people within a 5 mile radius of UT-Austin’s campus have CHLs.
Tens of thousands of visitors come to UT every semester.
The UT community is not just undergraduates, but also includes graduate students, faculty, administrators and staff–most of whom are over 21.
Texas recognizes licenses from other states, some of which have minimum ages of 18 or 19. Those licensed carriers are supposed to obey Texas law (including age restrictions) while in Texas, but many have had no training whatsoever and do not know Texas law. Alabama, for example, issues concealed carry licenses to people as young as 18, and has no training requirement at all.
There are classrooms, offices, meeting rooms, and other public spaces in some UT dorms, such as Jester and Carothers, where non-residents can come and go during business hours.

2. Campus Carry will allow people to protect themselves from criminals. WRONG:

Guns prove to be no more effective at protecting people from crime than other weapons and less effective than running and hiding or calling the police.
FBI data shows that the single leading cause of gun homicide is not from ‘criminals’ but from arguments that get out of hand.
Civilians with guns make it harder for qualified law enforcement to do their job in active shooter incidents, because they cannot distinguish the shooter from the CHL holders.

3. Gun Free zones attract criminals with guns. WRONG:

Mass shootings on and around college campuses are horrific and scary, but they are rare.
Most college campuses are gun-free and they are among the safest places in Texas and the US.
Mass shooters do not choose their targets because they are in Gun Free zones.

4. Good Guys with guns can stop Bad Guys with guns. WRONG:

The FBI found only 1 of 160 active shooter incidents between 2000-2013 was stopped by a civilian with a concealed carry permit (who was neither a member of law enforcement nor a security guard); 21 incidents were stopped by UNARMED civilians.
In several cases when CHL holders have attempted to intervene, they have been killed, injured, or nearly shot the wrong person.
Security experts with extensive training don’t trust CHL holders to be effective in a crisis
Simulations prove the security experts’ point.

5. Women with guns can better protect themselves against sexual violence. WRONG:

A study of FBI and Clery Act data shows that sexual violence has not decreased on campuses where Concealed Carry has been implemented.
Most campus sexual assault occurs between acquaintances, where the victim would be unlikely to use a gun.

6. Trust CHL holders: they are law-abiding citizens.

Conviction rates are unreliable, because negligent shootings by presumptive “good guys” often go unprosecuted.

SB11 directs college presidents to determine a “reasonable” policy for where guns are allowed. We call upon UT President Fenves to declare all campus buildings off limits to guns, and we call upon the legislature to respect that decision.

Sources Continue reading The Arguments Used by Campus Carry Supporters are Wrong →

Excerpts from “Texas Just Made College Less Safe” by Matt Valentine, Published in Politico Magazine, June 1, 2015:

When the founding fathers wrote that the right to bear arms “shall not be infringed,” did they mean guns must be allowed everywhere, even in classrooms and dorm rooms? The University of Virginia Board of Visitors took up the issue of campus carry in 1824, and didn’t have to look far for an originalist perspective—Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were in attendance. The board resolved that “No Student shall, within the precincts of the University … keep or use weapons or arms of any kind, or gunpowder.”

This year, the Texas legislature took a different tack, and voted to allow faculty, staff, visitors and students over age 21 to carry concealed handguns on college campuses in the state, provided they have a license. (In the 2013 legislative session, Texas reduced the training requirement for a concealed handgun license from 10 hours of instruction to just four. License applicants must also demonstrate the ability to hit human-sized, stationary targets at distances of 3 to 15 yards, with 70 percent accuracy.) …

William McRaven, chancellor of the University of Texas System, wrote to state representatives in April, warning them that campus carry could adversely affect faculty recruitment. In a nationally representative poll of college presidents, 95 percent said they oppose measures to allow concealed carry on campus…

Those who want to arm educators often cite the example of Pearl High School, where in 1997, Assistant Principal Joel Myrick retrieved a handgun from his own truck and confronted a gunman. (Some accounts forget to mention that Myrick was an Army reservist, and that he intervened as the 16-year-old assailant was leaving the school, following a shooting spree that left two people dead and three others injured.)

In fact you are less likely to be murdered on a school campus than in the general population. Beginning in 1990, the Clery Act required all colleges that participate in federal student aid programs to report crimes on and around their campuses. It’s illuminating data to swim through, and to compare to national totals. A database query of the CDC’s Fatal Injury Reports reflects 18,536 total homicides in Texas from 2001 to 2013. The Clery data indicates that only five of those were on or near college campuses. (There are currently about 1.5 million students enrolled in institutions of higher education in the state.) If campus carry will make Texas college campuses as safe as the rest of the state, they’ll be deadlier than they are now.

At one point, gun rights and gun control advocates saw eye-to-eye on guns in schools. In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting of 1999, even the NRA believed in “absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools.” In the annual meeting that year, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said that even talking about guns in schools should be prohibited. “We believe America’s schools should be as safe as America’s airports. You can’t talk about, much less take, bombs and guns onto airplanes. Such behavior in our schools should be prosecuted just as certainly as such behavior in our airports is prosecuted.”