A strong majority of speakers at the University of Texas at Austin’s first campus carry forum on Wednesday night voiced concern about the contentious law that will allow licensed Texans to carry concealed handguns in campus buildings.
But since lawmakers didn’t allow public universities to totally opt out of campus carry – as private schools can – many of those opposed to the proposal focused more on imploring school officials to make classrooms and other specific areas gun-free.
“I’m here to say as emphatically as I possibly can: Guns don’t belong in classrooms,” said Joan Neuberger, a UT-Austin history professor. “Not in the hands of criminals. Not in the hands of responsible gun owners. Not in the hands of CHL holders.” That nuance signals the next phase of the campus carry debate, as UT-Austin and other four-year universities start to get a handle on how they will implement the law in fall 2016.
Public university presidents have the ability to declare parts of campus, but not all of it, off-limits to gun. But it remains an open question of how much discretion the schools have, given that the law says only that the gun-free zones must be “reasonable.”
And town hall meetings – attended at UT-Austin by several dozen students, faculty, staff and graduates – are a critical step that several schools are now taking to gather feedback before making some preliminary recommendations likely by the end of the year.
“We are here to listen,” said Steven Goode, a UT-Austin law professor who’s leading the school’s campus carry working group.
Existing state law allows individuals with concealed handgun licenses to carry their firearms onto university grounds. But expanding that right to dorms, classrooms, cafeterias and other public campus buildings was a priority for pro-gun Republicans.
Campus carry ended up joining open carry as the major gun bills passed this year. Though open carry uses existing concealed carry law as its basis, lawmakers made it so licensed Texas still won’t be able to openly carry handguns on campus.
