By Andres Holliday
As a student body, we must involve ourselves in the concealed carry on campus conversation. Most importantly, one must have a strong understanding of the history and current information regarding such a topic, so I encourage all of you to research what I am testifying to you as it is all available online.
As many may know, in 1995, the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing concealed carry in Texas for the first time since the reconstruction era. When they passed the law it did not allowed anyone to carry in specific areas such as public parks, churches, hospitals, and universities. As time has passed, more violent crimes took place like the 1999 Fort Worth church massacre were a man mass murdered seven people before killing himself.
Many began to ask why the people couldn’t protect themselves and since then, the majority of those specific areas now allow concealed carry (universities not being one of them). Currently, more than 70 universities in the United States allow Concealed Handgun Licenses (CHL) holders to carry on campus and the majority of those universities have been doing this for more than eight years.
All 70 of the universities reported zero incidents including zero violent assaults, zero suicides, zero accidental shootings, zero gun theft, etc. when involving CHL holders on their campus. Every peer-reviewed study published in the state of Texas demonstrates no statistical connection linking concealed carry and rising weapon-related crime rates in any way.
Concealed carry on campus will not help criminals, but will permit those people who haven’t violently shot anyone and who already can carry their weapon in the theaters, in the hospital or in the public parks to also be able to carry in a university.
Concealed carry hasn’t caused an issue on other campuses, it hasn’t caused an issue in other states, and there is no logical reason why we would assume concealed carry will cause an issue on our college campuses. And for those reasons and many more, I am in support of concealed carry on campus.
