Guns on campus gets first hearing in Texas House

AUSTIN —  On her first day of class, 51-year-old Marie Kilian was talking with other students at Sam Houston State
University about what to do if a gunman walked in and started shooting.

Run. Tackle him. Throw textbooks. But all of those ideas seemed likely to get her killed.

"I am better able to protect myself in a Walmart than a collegeclassroom," Kilian said Wednesday, testifying in support of legislation that would allow concealed handgun license holders to carry their weapons in college classrooms and buildings acrossTexas.

As a license holder, Kilian said she would have another alternative: shoot back.
 

Kilian was among dozens of students, faculty and administrators
who testified before the bill was approved late Wednesday by the
state House Homeland Security and Public Safety committee.

Split along party lines, Republicans backed the measure on a 5-3 vote.

Supporters consider it a key gun-rights, self-defense measure to
prevent violent campus crime such as the Virginia Tech shootings in
2007. Opponents, including some university and law enforcement
officials, worry that students and faculty would live in fear of
classmates and colleagues, not knowing who might pull a gun over a
poor grade, broken romance or drunken argument.

Texas has become a prime battleground for a national campaign to
open campuses to firearms because of its gun culture and the size
of its university system, which includes 38 public colleges and
more than 500,000 students.

Similar firearms measures have been proposed in about a dozen other states, but all have faced strong
opposition, especially from college leaders.

Texas would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and several have allowed handguns.

Former Texas A&M University student Adrienne O'Reilly said she
was assaulted by a fellow student a couple of blocks off campus. At
5-foot-2, 115-pounds, "a handgun is the only thing that gives me a
fighting chance," said O'Reilly, who now has a concealed handgun
license.

"One wrong word could set off a temper," countered Mickey
Gressman, a student at Colin County Community College. "A lot of
people say it's for self-defense. Let's just fire campus police if
they're not doing their jobs and everybody has to start arming
themselves. ... More guns is going to cause a lot more trouble."
 

The Texas Senate passed a guns-on-campus bill in 2009, but it
died without a vote in the House. This year, more than half of the
Republican-controlled House's 150 members have signed on as
co-authors of one of the bills, and the issue is supported by
Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

The chancellor of the University of Texas system recently wrote
Perry and state lawmakers, saying school administrators do not want
guns on campus, fearing a rise in college suicides and violent
confrontations.
 

Alice Tripp, lobbyist for the Texas State Rifle Association,
which supports the bill, called college campuses "predator
magnets" where violent crimes such as rape are underreported.
 

Until the Virginia Tech killings, the worst college shooting in
U.S. history occurred at the University of Texas at Austin, when
sniper Charles Whitman went to the top of the administration tower
in 1966 and killed 16 people and wounded dozens. Last September, a
University of Texas student fired several shots from an assault
rifle on a campus street before killing himself.

Texas enacted its concealed handgun law in 1995, allowing people
21 or older to carry weapons if they pass a training course and a
background check. The state had 461,724 license holders as of Dec.
31, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
 

Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, author of House Bill 750, said the
issue applies mostly to faculty, staff and parents because most
students would be too young to qualify for a license. In 2010, only
7 percent of license holders in 2010 were between the ages of 21
and 25, Driver said.

"We're not talking about every student getting a gun," Driver
said. "I did not file this bill so (license holders) could be
heroes in mass-shooting situations. I filed this bill to allow
(them) to be able to protect themselves."

But some lawmakers on the committee noted that students are
staying in school longer and getting older, raising the percentage
of students who would qualify for licenses.
 

A University of Texas at Austin student, Katherine Merriweather,
said she was nearby when a student carried an assault rifle into a
campus library and killed himself last year. The gunman was the
only casualty.

"If another student had opened fire as a vigilante, I think the
matter would have been worse with so many students in the
library," she said.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo testified against the bill,
citing the potential for chaos if someone does begin shooting on
campus.

"When you think about 21-year-olds, responsibility is the last
thing they are thinking about," Acevedo said. "Common sense says
to me that guns on campus, like in bars, is not the right
environment."

Driver's bill would keep a ban on guns in bars, churches,
hospitals or athletic events on college campuses. It also would
apply to private universities, but gives give them the option to
ban concealed handguns after consulting with students, faculty,
parents and law enforcement.