www.ConcealedCampus.com

About Students for Concealed Carry on CampusJuly 2009

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization composed of over 40,000 college students, professors, college employees, parents of college students, 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. SCCC has members in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.

Both the membership and the leadership of SCCC are made up of individuals with very diverse political backgrounds. Among SCCC’s leaders you’ll find conservatives, moderates, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, etc. The members of SCCC look beyond partisanship, toward the common goal of achieving state laws and school policies based on factual evidence rather than emotional rhetoric.

College campuses, though typically safe, do play host to every type of violent crime found in the rest of society, from assault to rape to murder. Recent high-profile shootings and armed abductions on college campuses clearly demonstrate that “gun free zones” serve to disarm only those law-abiding citizens who might otherwise be able to protect themselves.

Because numerous independent researchers and state agencies agree that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes; because no other type of location has seen an increased rate of violent crime since concealed carry became legal there; because the twelve U.S. colleges/universities that currently allow concealed carry on campus (and have done so for a combined total of one hundred semesters) have not seen any resulting incidents of gun violence, gun accidents, or gun thefts; and because college campuses are open environments that lack screening measures such as metal detectors, X-ray machines, and controlled points of entry, SCCC feels that there is no pragmatic basis for declaring college campuses off-limits to concealed carry by the same trained, licensed adults (age twenty-one and above in most states) who lawfully and safely carry concealed handguns in locations such as office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, churches, banks, etc.

SCCC has two main functions. The first function is to dispel the common myths and misconceptions about concealed carry on college campuses, by making the public aware of the facts. The second function is to push state legislators and school administrators to grant concealed handgun license holders the same rights on college campuses that those licensees currently enjoy in most other unsecured locations.

Because SCCC fully supports states' rights, its policy is to push for change at the state level, rather than at the federal level. The first step is to see the laws in many states amended to remove statutory prohibitions against concealed carry on college campuses. The next step is to see other states follow Utah's lead in prohibiting state-funded colleges from refusing to honor state-issued licenses.

Though SCCC supports concealed carry on the campuses of both public and private colleges, it also strongly supports the rights of private property owners; therefore, SCCC believes that the issue of concealed carry at private colleges must be handled through negotiations with school administrators, rather than through state legislation. SCCC believes that private colleges should be encouraged to support concealed carry on campus through the enactment of state laws that grant colleges immunity from liability associated with allowing concealed carry on campus.

SCCC supports the legalization of CONCEALED carry by LICENSED individuals on COLLEGE

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any otherorganization.

campuses. SCCC has no official positions on open carry, unlicensed concealed carry, or concealed carry on the campuses of primary or secondary schools.

Answers to the Most Common Arguments Against Concealed Carry on College Campuses

Argument: "Guns on campus would lead to an escalation in violent crime."

Answer: "Since the fall semester of 2006, state law has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns onthe campuses of the nine degree-offering public colleges (20 campuses) and one public technical college (10 campuses) in Utah. Concealed carry has been allowed at Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO) since 2003 andat Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA) since 1995. After allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of one hundred semesters, none of these twelve schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides), a single gun accident, or a single gun theft. Likewise, none of the forty ‘right-to-carry’ states has seen a resulting increase in gun violence since legalizing concealed carry, despite the fact that licensed citizens in those states regularly carry concealed handguns in places like office buildings, movie theaters,grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, churches, banks, etc. Numerous studies*, including studies by University of Maryland senior research scientist John Lott, University of Georgia professor David Mustard, engineering statisticianWilliam Sturdevant, and various state agencies, show that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likelythan non-license holders to commit violent crimes."

*“Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; TexasDepartment of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000,compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association

Argument: "Guns on campus would lead to an increased number of suicides by college students."

Answer: "Studies* show that 90% of suicides are committed in the home. Because most college students over the age of twenty-one (the minimum age to obtain a concealed handgun license in most states) live off campus, allowingconcealed carry on college campuses would have very little impact on the ability of college students to possess firearms in their homes and, therefore, little to no impact on the overall number of suicides by college students."

*“Youth and Adolescent Suicide: A Guide for Educators,” Oregon Resiliency Project, University of Oregon, 2003; After Suicide: A Ray of Hope for Those Left Behind,Eleanora Betsy Ross, 2001

NOTE: At the University of Texas—a major university with over 50,000 students—a quick comparison of campus housing statistics and concealed handgun licensing statistics reveals that there would likely be no more than ten to twenty concealed handgun license holders living in on-campus housing.

Argument: "Guns on campus would distract from the learning environment."

Answer: "Ask anyone in a ‘right to carry’ state when he or she last noticed another person carrying a concealedhandgun. The word 'concealed' is there for a reason. Concealed handguns would no more distract college studentsfrom learning than they currently distract moviegoers from enjoying movies or office workers from doing their jobs.

“In most states with ‘shall-issue’ concealed carry laws, the rate of concealed carry is about 1%. That means that one person out of 100 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. Therefore, statistically speaking, a packed 300-seatmovie theater contains three individuals legally carrying concealed handguns, and a shopping mall crowded with1,000 shoppers contains ten individuals legally carrying concealed handguns. Students who aren't too afraid to attend movies or go shopping and who aren't distracted from learning by the knowledge that a classmate might be illegallycarrying a firearm shouldn't be distracted from learning by the knowledge that a classmate might be legally carrying afirearm.”

Argument: "Some professors might be afraid to issue bad grades if they know that students could be carrying guns."

Answer: "Why should professors be more afraid of issuing bad grades to students who want to carry guns LEGALLY than of issuing bad grades to students who might already be carrying guns ILLEGALLY? College campuses are open environments—they don’t have controlled points of entry, metal detectors, or X-ray machines.

“In light of the fact that a person unconcerned with violating the rules can walk onto a college campus carrying pretty much anything he or she chooses, some professors might feel more comfortable about issuing bad grades if they

knew they were allowed the means to defend themselves.”

Argument: "Colleges are too crowded to safely allow the carry of concealed weapons."

Answer: "Colleges are no more crowded than movie theaters, office buildings, shopping malls, and numerous other locations where concealed handgun license holders are already allowed to carry concealed handguns. The widespread passage of shall-issue concealed carry laws has not led to spates of shootings or gun thefts at those locations."

Argument: "A person with a gun could ‘snap’ and go on a killing spree."

Answer: "Contrary to popular myth, most psychiatric professionals agree that the notion of a previously sane, well-adjusted person simply ‘snapping’ and becoming violent is not supported by case evidence. A Secret Service study* into school shootings concluded that school shooters do not simply snap and that a person’s downward spiral toward violence is typically accompanied by numerous warning signs."

*“Safe School Initiative: An Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools,” U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education with support from the National Institute of Justice, Co-Directors Bryan Vossekuil, Marissa Reddy PhD, Robert Fein PhD, October 2000

Argument: "A dangerous person might jump someone who is carrying a gun, take the gun, and use it to do harm."

Answer: "Even assuming that this hypothetical dangerous person knew that an individual was carrying a concealed handgun, which is unlikely, there are much easier ways for a criminal to acquire a firearm than by assaulting an armed individual."

Argument: "Dorms are notoriously vulnerable to theft. It would be too easy for someone to steal an unattended firearm from a dorm."

Answer: "The vulnerability of dorms to theft does not necessitate a campus-wide ban on concealed carry by licensed individuals. There are numerous other options, from community gun lockups to small, private gun safes that can be secured to walls, floors, bed frames, etc."

NOTE: On most college campuses very few students of legal age to obtain a concealed handgun license still live in dorms. Even at the University of Texas—a major university with over 50,000 students—a quick comparison of campus housing statistics and concealed handgun licensing statistics reveals that there would likely be no more than ten to twenty concealed handgun license holders living in on-campus housing.

Argument: "It’s possible that a gun might go off by accident."

Answer: "Accidental discharges are very rare—particularly because modern firearms feature multiple safety features and because a handgun’s trigger is typically not exposed when it is concealed—and only a small fraction of accidental discharges result in injury. SCCC feels that it is wrong to deny citizens a right simply because that right is accompanied by a negligible risk."

NOTE: Only about 2% of all firearm-related deaths in the U.S. are accidental, and most of those are hunting accidents and accidents involving firearms being openly handled in an unsafe manner. A person is five times more likely to accidentally drown, five times more likely to accidentally die in a fire, 29 times more likely to die in an accidental fall, and 32 times more likely to die from accidental poisoning than to die from an accidental gunshot wound.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: The accidental discharge that occurred in the cockpit of a U.S. Airways jet, on March 22, 2008, occurred during the application of a poorly designed trigger lock, which FAA regulations require be in place during landing.

Argument: "It’s unlikely that allowing concealed carry on college campuses could help prevent a Virginia Tech-style massacre because most college students are too young to obtain a concealed handgun license."

Answer: "Nineteen of the thirty-two victims of the Virginia Tech massacre were over the age of twenty-one (the minimum age to obtain a concealed handgun license in Virginia and most other states)."

Argument: "Colleges are emotionally volatile environments. Allowing guns on campus will turn classroom debates into crime scenes."

Answer: "Before shall-issue concealed carry laws were passed throughout the United States, opponents claimed that

such laws would turn disputes over parking spaces and traffic accidents into shootouts. This did not prove to be the case. The same responsible adults—age twenty-one and above—now asking to be allowed to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses are already allowed to do so virtually everywhere else. They clearly do not let their emotions get the better of them in other environments; therefore, no less should be expected of them on college campuses."

Argument: "The college lifestyle is defined by alcohol and drug abuse. Why would any sane person want to add guns to that mix?"

Answer: "This is NOT a debate about keeping guns out of the hands of college students. Allowing concealed carry on college campuses would not change the rules about who can buy a gun or who can obtain a concealed handgun license. Every state that provides for legalized concealed carry has statutes prohibiting license holders from carrying while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Legalizing concealed carry on college campuses would neither make it easier for college students to obtain firearms nor make it legal for a person to carry a firearm while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Allowing concealed carry on college campuses would have no impact on the laws regulating concealed carry at bars and off-campus parties, the places where students (particularly students of legal age to obtain a concealed handgun license) are most likely to consume alcohol."

Argument: "In an active shooter scenario like the one that occurred at Virginia Tech, a student or faculty member with a gun would only make things worse."

Answer: "What is worse than allowing an execution-style massacre to continue uncontested? How could any action with the potential to stop or slow a deranged killer intent on slaughtering victim after victim be considered ‘worse’ than allowing that killer to continue undeterred? Contrary to what the movies might have us believe, most real-world shootouts last less than ten seconds*. Even the real Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a shootout involving nine armed participants and a number of bystanders, lasted only about thirty seconds and resulted in only three fatalities. It is unlikely that an exchange of gunfire between an armed assailant and an armed citizen would last more than a couple of seconds before one or both parties were disabled. How could a couple of seconds of exchanged gunfire possibly be worse than a ten-minute, execution-style massacre?"

*In The Line of Fire: Violence Against Law Enforcement, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Institute of Justice, 1997

Argument: "The job of defending campuses against violent attacks should be left to the professionals."

Answer: "Nobody is suggesting that concealed handgun license holders be charged with the duty of protecting campuses. What is being suggested is that adults with concealed handgun licenses be allowed to protect themselves on college campuses, the same way they’re currently allowed to protect themselves in most other unsecured locations. According to a U.S. Secret Service study* into thirty-seven school shootings, ‘Over half of the attacks were resolved/ended before law enforcement responded to the scene. In these cases the attacker was stopped by faculty or fellow students, decided to stop shooting on his own, or killed himself.’ The study found that only three of the thirty-seven school shootings researched involved shots being fired by law enforcement officers."

*“Safe School Initiative: An Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools,” U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education with support from the National Institute of Justice, Co-Directors Bryan Vossekuil, Marissa Reddy PhD, Robert Fein PhD, October 2000

Argument: "Police officers typically spend four to five months in training; whereas, concealed handgun license holders usually spend one day or less."

Answer: "Police officers do not spend four to five months learning to carry concealed handguns for self-defense; they spend four to five months learning to be police officers. Concealed handgun license holders are not police officers; therefore, they have no need of most of the training received by police officers. Concealed handgun license holders don't need to know how to drive police cars at high speeds or how to kick down doors or how to conduct traffic stops or how to make arrests or how to use handcuffs. And concealed handgun license holders definitely don't need to spend weeks memorizing radio codes and traffic laws.

"Contrary to what some opponents of concealed carry might claim, concealed handgun license holders don't need extensive tactical training because they are not charged with protecting the public—It’s not their job to act like amateur, one-man SWAT teams. All a concealed handgun license holder needs to know is how to use his or her concealed handgun to stop an immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm, and that type of training CAN be accomplished in a few hours."

NOTE: In some states, such as Texas, the shooting test for a concealed handgun license differs very little from the annual re-qualification test for police officers.

Argument: "The last thing we need is a bunch of vigilantes getting into a shootout with a madman, particularly since it's been proven that trained police officers have an accuracy rate of only about 15-25% in the field."

Answer: "Citizens with concealed handgun licenses are not vigilantes. They carry their concealed handguns as a means of getting themselves out of harm's way, not as an excuse to go chasing after bad guys. Whereas police shooting statistics involve scenarios such as pursuits down dark alleys and armed standoffs with assailants barricaded inside buildings, most civilian shootings happen at pointblank range. In the Luby's Cafeteria massacre, the Columbine High School massacre, and the Virginia Tech massacre, the assailants moved slowly and methodically, shooting their victims from very close range. A person doesn't have to be a deadeye shot to defend himself or herself against an assailant standing only a few feet away.

Argument: "How are first responders supposed to tell the difference between armed civilians and armed assailants?"

Answer: "This hasn't been an issue with concealed handgun license holders in other walks of life for several reasons. First and foremost, real-world shootouts are typically localized and over very quickly. It's not realistic to expect police to encounter an ongoing shootout between assailants and armed civilians. Second, police are trained to expect both armed bad guys AND armed good guys—from off-duty/undercover police officers to armed civilians—in tactical scenarios. Third, concealed handgun license holders are trained to use their firearms for self-defense. They are not trained to run through buildings looking for bad guys. Therefore, the biggest distinction between the armed assailants and the armed civilians is that the armed civilians would be hiding with the crowd, and the armed assailants would be shooting at the crowd."

Argument: "A Taser is as effective as a handgun against an armed assailant."

Answer: "If you're going to attempt to use a Taser to defend yourself against an armed assailant, you’d better hope the assailant isn’t wearing thick clothing or standing more than fifteen feet away. You’d also better hope that you don’t miss with your first shot and that you aren’t facing more than one assailant. And you’d better hope that you can escape to safety before the Taser’s effects wear off. Like handguns, Tasers are banned on most college campuses."

Argument: "Defense spray is as effective as a handgun against an armed assailant."

Answer: "If you're going to attempt to use a defense spray to defend yourself against an armed assailant, you’d better hope you bought one of the concentrated formulas that doesn’t take ten to fifteen seconds to begin working. You’d also better hope that the assailant is standing in close proximity to you and that you are in a well-ventilated location where you won’t find yourself overcome by the effects of the spray before you can escape to safety. Like handguns, defense sprays are banned on most college campuses."

Argument: "Self-defense training is as effective as a handgun against an armed assailant."

Answer: "If you're going to try to manually disarm an assailant, you'd better be within an arm's length of the assailant, be standing on firm ground, have no obstacles between you and the assailant, and be in relatively good physical condition. If the assailant is standing four feet away, you're probably out of luck. If you're sitting in a chair or lying on the floor, you're probably out of luck. If there is a desk between you and the assailant, you're probably out of luck. And if you're elderly or disabled, you're probably out of luck. Even a well-trained martial arts expert is no match for a bullet fired from eight feet away. Why should honest, law abiding citizens be asked to undergo years of training in order to master an inferior method of self-defense?"

Argument: "Some states allow citizens to be issued concealed handgun licenses at the age of eighteen."

Answer: "Among the thirty-six ‘shall-issue’ states*—states where local authorities cannot require qualified applicants to "show a need" before the applicant is issued a concealed handgun license/concealed carry weapons permit—six states allow, without special provision, for any qualified person eighteen years or older to be issued a concealed handgun license. These states are Indiana, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

“Based on the FBI/Department of Justice violent crime statistics for the year 2006, the crime rates for these seven states, when ranked with all fifty states and the District of Columbia, rank as follows:

Indiana – 30 Montana – 42 South Dakota – 47 New Hampshire – 48 North Dakota – 50 Maine – 51

“Not only are Maine, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and South Dakota four of the five** U.S. states with the lowest crime rates, Montana has the tenth lowest crime rate, and Indiana isn’t even in the top 50%. Clearly, these states’ lenient concealed handgun laws are not breeding generations of young violent offenders.

“The extraordinarily low crime rates in these six states, coupled with the fact that these states have a combined population of only about 10,900,000 (approximately 1.6 million less than the combined population of America’s two largest cities—New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA—and at approximately 1/3 the combined violent crime rate of those two cities) has led Students for Concealed Carry on Campus to focus on the majority of ‘shall-issue’ states where the minimum age to receive a concealed handgun license is twenty-one.”

*Alaska (licenses are offered but not required to carry a concealed handgun), Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming

**Vermont is ranked at 49—the third least violent state. Vermont neither requires nor offers a license to carry a concealed handgun.

Argument: "It is inconceivable that any logical person would believe that the answer to violence is more guns."

Answer: "One might have just as easily told Edward Jenner, the man who discovered in the late eighteenth century that the cowpox virus could be used to inoculate people against smallpox, 'It is inconceivable that any logical person would believe that the answer to disease is more viruses.'"

Argument: "The answer to bullets flying is not more bullets flying."

Answer: "Actually, the answer to bullets flying is almost always more bullets flying. That’s why the police bring so many guns with them when they respond to a report of ‘shots fired.’"

Argument: "The answer to school violence is prevention, not guns on campus."

Answer: "Prevention and preparedness are not mutually exclusive. In a perfect system, the two approaches to safety compliment each other. Preventive measures, such as teaching students and faculty to watch for the warning signs of mental illness and providing counseling to disturbed students, can work hand in hand with preparative measures, such as developing campus alert systems, providing additional training to campus police, and allowing the same trained, licensed adults who legally carry concealed handguns when not on college campuses to do so on college campuses."

Argument: "School shootings are very rare, and college campuses are statistically very safe. There is no need to allow concealed carry on campus."

Answer: "Though statistically safer than other comparable locations, college campuses play host to every type of violence found in the rest of society, from murder to assault to rape. The statistics suggest that allowing concealed carry on campus won’t hurt and might help; therefore, there is no legitimate reason not to allow it. A free society does not deny the people a right unless there is empirical evidence that granting that right will do more harm than good."

From the Horse’s Mouth

"I lobbied against the law in 1993 and 1995 because I thought it would lead to wholesale armed conflict. That hasn't happened. All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn't happen. No bogeyman. I think it's worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I'm a convert." -- Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News,12/23/97

"I ... [felt] that such legislation present[ed] a clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens by placing more handguns on our streets.Boy was I wrong. Our experience in Harris County, and indeed statewide, has proven my fears absolutely groundless." -- Harris County [Texas] District Attorney John Holmes, Dallas Morning News, 12/23/97

"Some of the public safety concerns which we imagined or anticipated a couple of years ago, to our pleasant surprise, have beenunfounded or mitigated." -- Fairfax County, VA, Police Major Bill Brown, Alexandria Journal, 7/9/97

"I was wrong. But I'm glad to say I was wrong." -- Arlington County, VA, Police Detective Paul Larson, Alexandria Journal, 7/9/97

"The concerns I had - with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square off against one another with weapons - we haven'texperienced that." -- Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, Police Chief Dennis Nowicki, The News and Observer, 11/24/97

Why our Campuses are NOT Safer without Concealed Handguns

Rebutting the Rhetoric of Students for Gun Free Schools

In response to the unprecedented media attention and public support generated by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC), the organization leading the charge to extendconcealed carry (of handgun) rights to college campuses, a counter-movement has emerged,operating under the banner Students for Gun Free Schools (SGFS). SGFS recently released an essay titled “Why our Campuses are Safer without Concealed Handguns.” This attack on the positions of SCCC brings few, if any, new arguments to the table and relies instead on the well-worn arguments put forth by groups like The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The crux of the SGFS essay is the undeniable fact that college campuses typically havelower crime rates than the cities in which they reside. Tossing academic standards of research and citation to the wind, the essay’s introduction simply points out this fact and concludes, “Students for Gun Free Schools (SGFS) believes these results can be attributed largely to strict policies that have kept firearms off our nation’s campuses.” Without citing corroborating facts or research, the same gun control advocates who want us to believe that lax gun control laws in nearby states negate the effectiveness of strict gun control laws in the District of Columbia and other tightly regulated cities/states now want us to believe that strict gun control regulations on college campuses are able to stand up against the lax gun control laws in the very cities in which those campuses reside.

To assume a cause and effect relationship between the unenforceable gun controlregulations on college campuses and the relative safety of college campuses constitutes an astoundingly naïve leap in logic. A similar disparity can be found between the relatively low crime rates in affluent neighborhoods and the higher crime rates in the cities in which those neighborhoods exist. After all, what are college campuses but, essentially, large, affluent neighborhoods?

After making the unsubstantiated claim that strict gun control regulations make college campuses safer, the essay moves on to present five reasons why SGFS believes that allowing concealed carry on college campuses would make colleges less safe:

1) Concealed handguns would detract from a healthy learning environment;2) More guns on campus would create additional risk for students; 3) Shooters would not be deterred by concealed carry permit holders; 4) Concealed carry permit holders are not always “law-abiding” citizens, and 5) Concealed carry permit holders are not required to have law enforcement training.

1) CONCEALED HANDGUNS WOULD NOT DETRACT FROM A HEALTHY LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

An opponent of concealed carry on campus isn’t doing his or her job unless he or she argues, “Concealed handguns would detract from a healthy learning environment.” The SGFS essay contends, “If concealed carry were allowed on America’s campuses, there is no doubt that many students would feel uncomfortable about not knowing whether their professors and/or fellow students were carrying handguns.” This argument not only ignores the fact that, in the absence of metal detectors and X-ray machines at every campus entrance, students already have no way of knowing who, if anyone, is carrying a gun; it also assumes that students would be made more uncomfortable by the presence of guns on campus than they are by the presence of guns off campus.

In most U.S. states approximately 1% of the population (one person out of 100) is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. Are students afraid to sit in 300-seat movie theaters knowing that, statistically speaking, as many as three of their fellow moviegoers may be legally carrying concealed handguns? Are they afraid to walk through crowded shopping malls knowing that one out of every hundred shoppers they pass is potentially carrying a legally concealed handgun? Or do they go through their daily routines, both on and off campus, never giving muchthought to what is concealed beneath the clothing and within the handbags of the people they pass? Does SGFS honestly contend that students on the twelve U.S. college campuses where concealed carry is currently allowed (all ten public colleges in the state of Utah, Colorado State University, and Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, VA) are afraid to engage in intelligent debate for fear that somebody nearby might have a gun? Does concealed carry discourage debate on the floor of the state legislatures in Texas and Virginia and the other states where it is allowed in the state capitol?

The SGFS essay points to a 1999 survey that asked 1500 respondents, “Do you think regular citizens should be allowed to bring their guns [onto] college campuses?” This survey, which asked only about “regular citizens” and made no distinction for concealed handgun licenseholders, took place ten years ago, when America’s right-to-carry laws were still in their infancy and before many current right-to-carry states adopted “shall-issue” licensing laws. At that timevery few Americans were familiar with the process or even the notion of obtaining a concealed handgun license, and it is absurd to suggest that this outdated poll reflects current national opinion on the rights of trained, licensed adults. However, accepting for the sake of argumentthat a majority of the general public does oppose allowing concealed carry on college campuses,what does that prove? Beyond the 1% who possess concealed handgun licenses, what percentage of Americans can tell you the requirements to obtain a concealed handgun license in their state, much less accurately comment on whether or not concealed carry leads to more or less crime?Public opinion does not always dictate public policy on complicated issues of public safety. The FDA does not poll the public on acceptable procedures for sanitizing meatpacking plants.

2) MORE GUNS ON CAMPUS WOULD CREATE LITTLE IF ANY ADDITIONAL RISK FOR STUDENTS

The SGFS essay goes on to assert, “More guns on campus would create additional risk for students.” Citing a study by the Brady Campaign, the essay points to “(1) The prevalence of

drugs and alcohol; (2) The risk of suicide and mental health issues; (3) The likelihood of gun thefts, and; (4) An increased risk of accidental shootings.” The essay doesn’t mention that after allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of one hundred semesters, none of the aforementioned twelve U.S. college have seen a single resulting incident of a student under the influence of drugs or alcohol using or brandishing a weapon on campus, a single resultingsuicide, a single resulting gun theft, or a single resulting gun accident.

The essay points to a 2007 Columbia University study that concluded, “[N]early half of America’s 5.4 million full-time college students abuse drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month;” however, the essay fails to differentiate between underclassmen and upperclassmen. Since the age limit to obtain a concealed handgun license in most states is 21, it seems only fair to note that a three-year study by The Task Force on College Drinking, commissioned by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), found that ages 18 through 21 is the period of heaviest alcohol consumption for most drinkers in the United States, that college students under the age of 21 are more likely than older students to binge drink and have alcohol related problems, and that the average levels of drinking drop off significantly by the age of 23. In July of 2008 more than 100 university chancellors and college presidents, recognizing that binge drinking is primarily a problem among students under the age of 21 and convinced that college binge drinking occurs because students under the age of 21 are not allowed to drink in the same safe, controlled environments as students over the age of 21, signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, a movement aimed at creating a dialogue over the wisdom of the national drinking age.

According to Dr. Robert D. Foss, manager of alcohol studies at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC), “Almost everybody misperceives how muchcollege students actually drink. When people are asked to estimate it, they almost always way overshoot the reality.” Between 1999 and 2003, HSRC conducted a study that used breathalyzers(as opposed to the anonymous surveys used in the studies cited by SGFS) to gauge the drinking habits of students at the University of North Carolina. According to Dr. Foss, “Our findings ran counter to reports in the national media that portrayed excessive college student drinking as a rampant epidemic.” The study found that two out of three students returning to their residences on Friday and Saturday nights had not had anything to drink and that many of the remaining 1/3 had only had a few drinks. The rate of alcohol consumption during the rest of the week was found to be much lower.

The SGFS essay also points to a 2002 Harvard University study that found that students who have firearms at college are more likely to binge drink, drive while under the influence, use illegal drugs, vandalize property, and get into trouble with the police. What the essay doesn’tpoint out is that a comparison of the Harvard study’s data to concealed handgun licensing data from that same period of time suggests that fewer (most likely far fewer) than 5% of the gun owners surveyed were concealed handgun license holders. Studies* show that concealed handgun license holders, unlike unlicensed gun owners, are significantly less likely than the general population to engage in criminal behavior.

Despite all of these statistics, the issue of alcohol consumption and reckless behavior by college students is a moot point—this is not a debate about keeping guns out of the hands of college students. Allowing concealed carry on college campuses would not change the rules about who can purchase a firearm or who can obtain a concealed handgun license. It also wouldn’t change the rules at off-campus parties and bars, the places where individuals over the age of 21 are most likely to consume alcohol. And it would not make it legal to carry a handgun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Changing the rules would simply allow the same

trained, licensed adults who carry concealed handguns, without incident when not on campus, to do so on campus. There is no reason to assume that the same individuals who aren’t getting drunk and shooting people outside of college campuses would suddenly get drunk and start shooting people on college campuses.

SGFS’s arguments about suicide and the vulnerability of dorm rooms to theft carry verylittle weight when viewed in light of the fact that this is not a debate about who can own or carry a gun. The overwhelming majority of suicides are committed in the victim’s home. Under current regulations, the only students prohibited from keeping firearms in their homes are students living in on-campus housing. At most colleges, on-campus housing is occupied primarily by freshmen and sophomores, students typically too young to obtain a concealed handgun license. A comparison of housing statistics at the University of Texas (a major university with over 50,000 students) to Texas concealed handgun licensing statistics shows a probability of only 10 to 20 concealed handgun license holders living in on-campus housing.Statistically speaking, how many of those ten to twenty individuals are likely to commit suicide in a given year? As for theft, the vulnerability of dorms to theft does not necessitate a campus-wide ban on concealed carry. There are a multitude of security options, from floor safes to safes that bolt to bed frames to community gun lockups.

Concerns about accidental discharges are overblown, to say the least. Accidental discharges of concealed firearms are very rare—particularly because modern firearms are designed with safety in mind and because a handgun’s trigger is typically not exposed when it is concealed—and only a small fraction of accidental discharges result in injury. It is silly to suggest that citizens should be denied a right simply because that right is accompanied by a negligible risk.

3) SHOOTERS MAY OR MAY NOT BE DETERRED BY CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT HOLDERS, BUT DETERRING SHOOTING SPREES IS ONLY ONE OF SEVERAL POTENTIAL BENEFITS

SGFS goes on to argue, “Shooters would not be deterred by concealed carry permitholders.” To quote Louisiana State Representative Ernest D. Wooton, speaking at the 2008 SCCC National Conference in Washington, D.C., “If we don’t try it, are we going to know?”

Though campus shooters are frequently suicidal, they are not simply suicidal—if they were, they would simply shoot themselves at home and leave everyone else alone. Campusshooters go on armed rampages because they misguidedly seek to make a point or attain infamy.It’s hard to attain infamy if a concealed handgun license holder ends your shooting spree before it begins. Even if the knowledge that concealed handgun license holders might be present isn’tenough to deter all would-be gunmen, an attempted shooting spree thwarted by a licensee mightbe enough to deter a few.

The SGFS essay points to two attacks on facilities where the shooters knew that law enforcement officers would be present, as evidence that suicidal gunmen are not deterred by armed resistance. Those particular shooters may not have been deterred, but they also didn’t cause nearly as great a loss of life as is often caused by shooters in “gun free zones.” In those two incidents, the shooters killed a combined total of five people, less than one sixth the total body count from the Virginia Tech massacre.

The issue of concealed carry on college campuses is not just about preventing campusshooting sprees. Though it’s the mass shootings that get the headlines, college campuses play host to assaults, rapes, and every type of criminal activity found in the rest of society. The question of whether or not concealed carry would deter would-be mass-shooters should not be the determining factor in whether or not it is allowed on college campuses. Why should a 105 lb. woman who is allowed the means to defend herself against a 250 lb. would-be rapist outside of campus not be afforded that same right on campus? Why should a professor who is allowed the means to defend himself at the local bank and at his neighborhood church be forced to hide under his desk listening to gunshots getting closer, with no recourse but to hope and pray the gunmandoesn’t find him?

4) CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT HOLDERS ARE NOT ALWAYS “LAW-ABIDING” CITIZENS, BUT THEY’RE STATISTICALLY MORE LAW-ABIDING THAN MOST

Students for Gun Free Schools unnecessarily points out, “Concealed carry permit holders are not always ‘law-abiding’ citizens.” This is true. Likewise, law enforcement officers, elected officials, and clergy members are not always “law-abiding” citizens. Every segment of society has its bad apples, but statistically speaking, concealed carry has fewer than most. Numerousstudies* by independent researchers and state agencies suggest that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes. A comparison of statistics** in the mid-nineties, when Florida was still one of the few shall-issuestates, found that Florida concealed handgun license holders were three times less likely to be arrested than were New York City police officers.

Despite the fact that Students for Concealed Carry on Campus does not advocateconcealed carry by unlicensed individuals, SGFS finds it necessary to point out that Alaska and Vermont do not require (though Alaska offers) a license to carry a concealed handgun. The essay then goes on to erroneously suggest, “The primary requirement for obtaining a permit in [the 38 shall-issue] states is to pass a background check through the National Instant CriminalBackground Check System.” In reality, many states, such as Texas, require applicants to submitto extensive state and federal fingerprint and background checks that often take one to three months (far from instant) to complete.

The essay further blurs the line between the requirements to purchase a firearm and the requirements to obtain a concealed handgun license by stating, “The only misdemeanorconvictions that would prohibit someone from owning and purchasing firearms, however, are those related to incidents of domestic violence. Someone who obtains a concealed carry permitin a shall-issue state could have a rap sheet with other types of misdemeanor convictions, including violent offenses.” The factors that can disqualify an individual from obtaining a concealed handgun license vary from state to state, but most states place certain restrictions and time limits on misdemeanor offenders. For instance, in the state of Texas you cannot obtain a concealed handgun license if you have had any misdemeanor convictions greater than a traffic citation in the past five years. A current license holder who commits a misdemeanor greater thana traffic violation would immediately have his or her license revoked.

The SGFS essay refers to several mass-shooters and erroneously suggests that several of them either possessed or would have qualified for concealed handgun licenses. For example, the

essay mentions Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech Shooter, even though his adjudication as a danger to himself and others would have disqualified him from obtaining a concealed handgun license in most shall-issue states. Contrary to the claims of SGFS, mental health rulings are commonly considered by states when deciding whether or not to issue a concealed handgun license.

Perhaps most discrediting of SGFS’s many claims is its citation of a widely discredited 2001 study by the Violence Policy Center, a highly biased gun control advocacy group. The study claims that Texas concealed handgun license holders were arrested for weapon-related offenses at a rate 81% higher than the general population of Texas age 21 and older, between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 2000 (SGFS mistakenly lists the end date as August 31, 2001). This study, which took place during the first five years of Texas’s concealed handgunlicensing program, when police officers were not always clear on the new weapons laws and often took a “better safe than sorry” approach to making arrests, focused solely on arrests, not convictions. According to Texas Department of Corrections statistics from that same period of time, Texas concealed handgun license holders were 7.6 times less likely than non-license holders to be arrested for violent crimes (as opposed to the weapons crimes—which can include nonviolent offenses such as attempting to carry a concealed handgun into a federal building—researched by the Violence Policy Center). A four-year study by engineering statistician WilliamE. Sturdevant found that Texas concealed handgun license holders were 5.5 times less likely than non-license holders to be convicted of violent crimes. According to statistics from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported by the San Antonio Express-News in September 2000, Texas concealed handgun license holders were 14 times less likely than the non-license holders to commit a crime of any kind and five times less likely to commit a violent crime. The SGFS essay mentions murder as one of the crimes for which Texas concealed handgun license holders were arrested during the course of the VPC study, but the essay fails to mention that in the first ten years of Texas’s concealed handgun licensing program (during which time over a quarter of a million concealed handgun licenses were issued), only eight Texas concealed handgun license holders were convicted of murder. As of January 1, 2007, no Texas concealed handgun license holder had ever been convicted of capital murder. The discrepancy between arrests and convictions is caused, in large part, by the way law enforcement officers respond to a self-defense shooting. If the facts of a self-defense shooting are not immediatelyevident, a shooter who acted within the letter of the law may still be arrested for murder and held until investigators are able to sort out the sequence of events.

The SGFS essay concludes its attack on the integrity of concealed handgun license holders by pointing to a 2007 investigation by the Florida Sun-Sentinel that purportedly found more than 1,400 convicted felons in possession of Florida concealed handgun licenses. Though the Florida licensing system may have a few cracks in its screening process, the cracks appear to be relatively minor. Those 1,400 convicted felons constitute only about 0.1% of all Florida concealed handgun license holders. And the cracks apparently aren’t causing problems.Statistics show that Florida concealed handgun license holders are still significantly less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes. In fact, according to Florida state agencies, you are more than twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator than by a concealed handgunlicense holder in the state of Florida.

The truth is that possessing a concealed handgun license and/or having the right to legally carry a firearm does not enable a person to carry a gun or commit a crime. There are no checkpoints where officials screen for guns and check licenses. A person intent on carrying a gun can easily do so throughout modern American society, including on college campuses,

regardless of whether or not he or she is licensed to do so. An individual engaged in criminalactivity is typically not concerned with the prospect of committing a misdemeanor (carrying a concealed handgun without a license) on his or her way to commit a felony (armed robbery, assault, rape, murder, etc).

5) CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT HOLDERS ARE NOT REQUIRED TO HAVE LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

For its final argument, the essay points out, “Concealed carry permit holders are notrequired to have law enforcement training.” This is true. Concealed carry permit holders are notrequired to have law enforcement training because they are not law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers do not go through academy training to learn to carry concealed handgunsfor self-defense; they go through academy training to learn to be law enforcement officers.Concealed handgun license holders have no need of most of the training received by law enforcement officers. Concealed handgun license holders don't need to know how to drive policecars at high speeds or how to kick down doors or how to conduct traffic stops or how to makearrests or how to use handcuffs. And concealed handgun license holders definitely don't need to spend weeks memorizing radio codes and traffic laws.

Contrary to what SGFS and other opponents of concealed carry might claim, concealed handgun license holders don't need extensive tactical training because they are not charged with protecting the public. Concealed handgun license holders don’t go looking for bad guys—it’s not their job to act like amateur, one-man SWAT teams. All a concealed handgun license holder needs to know is how to use his or her concealed handgun to stop an immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm. That type of training can be accomplished in the one-day training courses required to obtain a concealed handgun license in most states.

The SGFS essay accurately points out that police officers in the field typically hit their intended targets approximately 25% of the time. What it fails to point out is that police officers frequently encounter scenarios that a concealed handgun license holder would never encounter.License holders do not chase bad guys down dark alleys or raid drug labs or engage in standoffs with criminals barricaded inside buildings. According to experts on the issue, most self-defense shootings occur at close range and are over in a matter of seconds.

Interestingly enough, law enforcement officers in most states are only required to requalify with their weapons once a year, and in some states, such as Texas, the requalification test for law enforcement officers varies very little from the shooting test that must be passed by concealed handgun license applicants.

Not surprisingly, the SGFS essay presents the typical farfetched scenarios of self-defense shootings resulting in “collateral damage” and of multiple students drawing weapons and finding themselves unable to identify the actual “shooter” in prolonged shootouts. This ignores both the findings of a 1997 FBI study*** that concluded that most shootouts last less than ten seconds and the fact that the rate of concealed carry among individuals in their twenties is typically about one half of one percent. How nine seconds of exchanged gunfire between two armed individuals could possibly lead to greater loss of life than a nine-minute, uncontested execution-style massacre, such as the one that occurred at Virginia Tech, is something Students for Gun Free

Schools, like most opponents of concealed carry on campus, doesn’t attempt to explain. Likewise, they make no attempt to explain how one of these brief shootouts could lead to multiple students drawing their weapons and losing track of the shooter, when statistically speaking, only about one out of every 200 students would be armed. Given the fact that even a huge 400-seat lecture hall would statistically contain only two students with concealed handgun licenses, the chance of one of those armed students losing track of the actual shooter during a few seconds of exchanged gunfire is highly unlikely.

Students for Gun Free Schools concludes its essay by suggesting that the relatively small number of justified shooting deaths each year somehow proves that concealed carry is ineffective. Like many opponents of concealed carry, they fail to realize that the key factor is not the number of bad guys killed but, rather, the number of good guys saved. According to a 1991 FBI study****, less than one out of a thousand lawful defensive uses of a firearm results in the death of the attacker. By that estimate, firearms are used almost five times more frequently to save lives than to take lives in the U.S.

In the end, Students for Gun Free Schools’ arguments against concealed carry on campus, like all arguments against concealed carry on campus, rely entirely on speculation, false assumptions, and emotion. Most college campuses in America are surrounded by neighborhoods where concealed handgun license holders, including college students, lawfully carry concealed handguns at movie theaters, grocery stores, shopping malls, office buildings, restaurants, churches, banks, etc. Yet, we don’t hear of spates of accidental discharges or alcohol-fueled shootings by licensees in those places. If the majority of college campuses are safer than their surrounding areas because they don’t allow concealed carry on campus, why don’t we see higher crime rates at the twelve U.S. colleges that do allow concealed carry on campus? After a combined total of one hundred semesters, why haven’t we seen any negative results on those twelve campuses? There is absolutely no verifiable evidence to suggest that allowing concealed carry on college campuses makes campuses any less safe; therefore, reason dictates that current school policies and state laws against concealed carry on campus serve only to stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals who have no regard for school policy or state law. SCCC simply seeks to take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent.

SCCCBetter armed because we’re armed with knowledge and guns!

* “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association ** A comparison of statistics on arrests of police officers, published by the Washington Post on 08/28/94, to Florida Department of Law Enforcement statistics submitted to the Governor on 03/15/95. *** “In The Line of Fire: Violence Against Law Enforcement,” U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Institute of Justice, 1997 **** “Critical Incidents in Policing,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991

The Myth that Campus Shootings Happen Too Fast for CHL Holders to React

This is a brief excerpt from an article that appeared on the AP wire on March 29, 2009:

John Woods sometimes sits in a classroom at the University of Texas and wonders what would happen if somebody walked in and started shooting.

In April 2007, he was a student at Virginia Tech when his girlfriend and several other people he knew there were gunned down in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Thirty-two people died, plus the gunman.

There were times when Woods thought that maybe he should get a gun.

“Then I learned pretty fast that wouldn't solve anything,” said Woods, who is now a graduate student at UT. “The idea that somebody could stop a school shooting with a gun is impossible. It's reactive, not preventative.”

[….]

“Everything happens too quickly,” Woods said. “You either play dead or you are dead.”

Mr. Woods apparently has a very short memory. He’s apparently forgotten the following stories of professors and students who died in that shooting spree while trying to save others (excerpt from Wikipedia):

Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, held the door of his classroom, room 204, shut while Cho attempted to enter it. Librescu was able to prevent the shooter from entering the classroom until most of his students escaped through the windows, but he died after being shot multiple times through the door. One student in his classroom was killed.

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak tried to save the students in her French classroom, room 211, after looking Cho in the eye in the hallway. Colin Goddard, one of seven survivors in the French class, told his family that Couture-Nowak ordered her students to the back of the class for their safety and made a fatal attempt to barricade the door.

Student Henry Lee was also killed while trying to help Professor Couture-Nowak barricade the door.

In room 206, the movements of a wounded Waleed Shaalan distracted Cho from a nearby student after the shooter had returned to the room, according to a student eyewitness. Shaalan was shot a second time and died.

Also in room 206, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan may have protected fellow student Guillermo Colman by diving on top of him. Colman's various accounts make it unclear whether this act was intentional or the involuntary result of being

shot. Multiple gunshots killed Lumbantoruan, but Colman was protected by Lumbantoruan's body.

Hearing the commotion on the floor below, Professor Kevin Granata brought 20 students from a nearby classroom into an office, where the door could be locked, on the third floor of Norris Hall. He then went downstairs to investigate and was shot by Cho. Granata died from his injuries. None of the students locked in Granata's office were injured.

These people also had time to act (excerpt from Wikipedia):

Student Zach Petkewicz barricaded the door of room 205 with a large table after substitute professor Haiyan Cheng and an unidentified female student in the same class saw Cho heading toward them. Cho shot several times through the door but failed to force his way in. No one in that classroom was wounded or killed.

Katelyn Carney, Derek O'Dell, Trey Perkins, and Erin Sheehan barricaded the door of room 207, the German class, after the first attack and tended to the wounded. Cho returned minutes later but O'Dell, Perkins, and Carney prevented him from re-entering the room. O'Dell and Carney were injured.

Mr. Woods has forgotten the account of Garret Evans, who watched the shooter shoot multiple classmates and then stop to reload before proceeding to shoot Mr. Evans in the leg.

Mr. Woods has also apparently forgotten Emily Haas’s account of hiding under her desk, listening to gun shots getting closer, “waiting and hoping” the shooter wouldn’t come into her room. After Ms. Haas spent five minutes on the phone with 911, the shooter finally did enter her room, and although she survived with only superficial gunshot wounds, her professor and ten of her classmates lost their lives.

The Norris Hall shooting at Virginia Tech lasted NINE MINUTES. Clearly, everything did not happen too quickly for students to call 911. Clearly, everything did not happen too quickly for the gunman to stop and reload his weapons. And clearly, everything did not happen too quickly for a few brave men and women to try to help the people around them.

Debunking ABC's 20/20 Episode "If I Only Had a Gun"

By W. Scott Lewis

The April 10, 2009, episode of ABC’s 20/20, titled “If I Only Had a Gun," features a demonstration/experiment intended to show the improbability of a civilian with a concealed handgun stopping a mass shooting.

The most obvious shortcoming of the 20/20 demonstration/experiment is that it focused on a quick draw scenario in a small, single classroom, not a protracted massacre spread over multiple rooms, as was the case at Virginia Tech, Columbine, the recent civic center shooting in Binghamton, NY, etc. Even the NIU shooting took place in a large hall full of hundreds of students and lasted 2-3 minutes.

The demonstration/experiment was clearly designed to promote the argument that mass shootings happen too fast for individuals with concealed handguns to respond. Proponents of this position ignore the fact that at least one surviving victimof the Virginia Tech massacre spent five minutes talking to a 911 operator on her cell phone and listening to gunshots getting closer, before being shot by the gunman. She survived, but her professor and ten of her classmates lost their lives. Proponents of this position also ignore the fact that surviving victims of both the Virginia Tech and NIU shootings hid under their desks and watched the gunmen reload. It's hard to believe that students and faculty members who had time to dial 911 and/or who had a window of opportunity while the gunmen reloaded would not have had time to draw a concealed handgun, take aim, and fire.

A more subtle problem with the experiment is that the test subjects used concealed holsters to which they were introduced only a couple of hours earlier. And they had their vision and dexterity limited by paintball helmets and gloves. It takes a lotof practice to draw from a concealed holster, even without those inhibitors.

A third, much more egregious problem with the staged scenario is that the individual who played the gunman was a HIGHLY trained individual who not only knew there was an armed “student” in the room but also knew WHICH student had a concealed handgun and WHERE he or she would be sitting. Pitting a firearms instructor who has undergone years of training, who knows the scenario is staged and therefore isn't suffering from the same debilitating effects of adrenaline that areal gunman would experience, and who knows the location and identity of his only armed opposition is not a realistic simulation of a typical multiple victim shooting scenario.

Finally, in the episode’s analysis of the demonstration/experiment, the hosts play up the fact that one of the subjects “came close” to shooting a fellow classmate who ran in front of her while she was firing; however, the show never directly addresses the fact that none of the subjects actually shot any innocent bystanders. None of the scenario outcomes were made worse by the presence of one civilian with a concealed handgun. And no mention is made of the fact that the student running through the middle of the classroom would have been an easy target for the gunman, had the gunman not been facing armed resistance.

The fact that the scenario was set up as a quick draw test, the fact that the demonstration utilized concealed holsters with which the subjects were not intimately familiar, and the fact that the gunman had the distinct advantage of knowing both when and where he would face armed resistance completely discredits this demonstration/experiment as an accurate examination of whether or not a concealed handgun license holder could stop a mass shooting. The experiment might have gained a bit of credibility if it had included among the test subjects one or two licensed civilians who carry concealed handguns on a daily basis.

Instead, many aspects of the experiment just come across as silly. For example, it's difficult to fault someone who thinks he’s in a handgun training class for not immediately responding to a surprise attack perpetrated by an outsider who enters the class wearing full paintball gear, especially while the entire class is, coincidentally, also wearing full paintball gear. It's safe to say the test subjects might have had good reason to suspect that the shooting wasn't real.

At one point in the episode, the narrator concedes that concealed handguns have been used to “scare off” assailants in the past; however, no mention is made of the countless incidents where concealed handguns have been used to safely and successfully SHOOT assailants. And the only examples of self-defense shootings cited by the episode are clips from surveillance cameras, used to show examples of civilians firing handguns in self-defense and either not hitting their targets orfiring too close to other civilians.

Despite all of the episode’s talk about the danger to bystanders, it does not present any examples of self-defense shootings where bystanders were actually caught in a crossfire or hit by stray bullets.

The episode presents a strongly biased anti-concealed carry position as if it were the irrefutable, scientifically proven gospeltruth. In reality, the only thing this 20/20 special proves is that many members of the media strongly oppose the idea of civilians owning and, particularly, carrying firearms for personal protection.

Essays and Editorials about

Texas Senate Bill 1164and

Texas House Bill 1893 (February - May 2009)

Line-by-Line Rebuttal to University of Texas at Austin Student Government Resolution AR 7

AR 7 In Support of the Existing Handgun Ban on Texas College Campuses

Author: John O. Woods, Graduate Research Assistant, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin; and Alumnus, Virginia Tech Class of 2007

Sponsors: Representatives Danielle Brown, David Chincanchan, Rachel Meyerson, Justin Stein, and Tressa Westerman

Rebuttal prepared by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (ConcealedCampus.org)

WHEREAS Texas law does not at present allow any weapons in campus buildings except in the possession of on-duty law enforcement officials; and the possession of a weapon in a Texas educational institution has for some time been a third-degree felony,1

The argument that something should be done a certain way because it has always been done that way is a common logical fallacy referred to as an argumentum ad antiquitatem, or an appeal to tradition. A society that based its laws on such a logical fallacy would never progress.

WHEREAS the University of Texas Police Department currently employs sixty-four police officers for public safety, all of whom are both better equipped and better trained to protect the UT community than private citizens,

Nobody is proposing that concealed handgun license holders be charged with protecting the UT community. What is being suggested is that trained, licensed adults—age twenty-one and above (except for military personnel, who can obtain a concealed handgun license at age 18)—who are allowed the means to protect themselves outside of campus be allowed that same measure of personal protection on campus.

WHEREAS in accordance with the comparatively stricter weapons regulations, the per-capita rates of murders and aggravated assault for the University of Texas at Austin (2000 - July 2008) are significantly lower than for the City of Austin (2000 - 2007),2

A similar difference in violent crime rates can be found between the Austin subdivision of West Lake Hills and the city of Austin (the violent crime rate in West Lake Hills is less than 1/11 that of the city of Austina). The low crime rate on the UT campus is not a reflection on the school’s weapons policy (which, in the absence of enforcement measures such as metal detectors and X-ray machines, has absolutely no effect on a criminal’s ability to bring a concealed handgun onto campus) but, rather, an example of the discrepancy always found between the crime rates of affluent neighborhoods/communities within a metropolitan area and the crime rate of the metropolitan area as a whole. It should also be noted that over half of all aggravated assaults and almost two-thirds of all sexual assaults occur between the hours of 6 PM and 6 AMb, when college campuses are much less densely populated; therefore, it is somewhat misleading to extrapolate campus crime rates from enrollment numbers, since only a fraction of the overall student body is present on campus during the hours when most violent crimes occur.

WHEREAS the vast majority (93%) of violent crimes against students are committed off-campus,3

Though typically safe, college campuses do play host to every type of violent crime found in the rest of society, from assault to rape to murder. The suggestion that the people should be denied a right simply because it might be of limited benefit does not jibe with the philosophy of a free society. A free society only denies the people a right if the evidence clearly shows that granting the right will do more harm than good.

Why should a graduate student who is able to defend herself when leaving a local health club not be able to defend herself when leaving a student rec center? Why should a twenty-two-year-old undergrad not be allowed the same level of personal protection when studying late at the school library as when studying late at the public library? Why deny the professor who is able to defend himself at a theater on Saturday and at a church on Sunday the ability to defend himself in his classroom on Monday?

WHEREAS suicide is a greater problem for college students than other demographics in the United States: it is the second-leading cause of death among college students (ninth-leading cause of death among the entire U.S. population);4 moreover, suicides attempted using guns are fatal between 82 and 91% of the time, more than any other method5,

This is not a debate about keeping guns out of the hands of college students. It’s a debate about whether or not the same trained, licensed adults who are already allowed to carry concealed handguns throughout the rest of Texasc (in locations such as movie theaters, office buildings, shopping malls, grocery stores, restaurants, churches, banks, state and municipal offices, the Texas Capitol, etc.) should be allowed to do so on college campuses.

It’s worth noting, however, that, according to Dr. Paul Barreira, psychiatrist and director of Behavioral Health and Academic Counseling at Harvard University Health Services, the rate of suicide among college students is one third lower than the rate of suicide among non-students in the same age groupd. There is absolutely no logic in using suicide as an argument for denying concealed carry rights to a segment of the population that is statistically less likely to commit suicide than their counterparts who are not denied concealed carry rights. This is especially true in light of the fact that concealed carry has not led to a spate of suicides among non-students of college age.

WHEREAS in 2005, greater than half of all firearms deaths both in Texas and nation-wide were suicides6,

According to statistics, nine out of 10 suicides are committed in the homee. According to SCCC estimates, determined by comparing UT housing statistics to Texas Department of Public Safety concealed handgun licensing statistics, there would likely be no more than 10-20 Texas concealed handgun license holders living in UT on-campus housing in any given yearf. How many of those 10-20 individuals are expected to commit suicide each year? Arguing that CHL holders must be protected from themselves is an act of desperation by opponents of concealed carry on campus. There has been no epidemic of public suicides by CHL holders throughout the rest of society. Most college students old enough to obtain a concealed handgun license live off campus. The only individuals under the age of twenty-one eligible to obtain concealed handgun licenses are military personnel, and most of them already have access to an abundance of firearms.

WHEREAS proponents of "concealed carry on campus" argue that arming students and teachers would deter attacks like those at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University; however, both cases (and indeed the majority of recent school shootings) were murder-suicides, suggesting that deterrence is unlikely to play a role in prevention7,

The potential to deter dangerous criminals is only one of many potential benefits of allowing concealed carry on college campuses. The most significant benefit is the extension to college campuses of the level of personal protection for concealed handgun license holders that they enjoy virtually everywhere else.

Though it’s true that the perpetrators of most shooting sprees are suicidal, it is wrong to assume that they are simply suicidal. If they were simply suicidal, they would simply kill themselves and leave everyone else alone.Spree shooters seek to either make some sort of misguided point to society or attain some level of infamy. Would-be spree shooters know that they are less likely to achieve those goals on a campus where neither state law nor school policy stack the odds in their favor. A look at recent spree shootings, such as the shooting at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, reveals that most of these spree shooters take their own lives as soon as they encounter armed resistance (i.e., police). In 1997 an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi, ended a campus shooting spree by retrieving his handgun from his car and holding the shooter at gunpoint until police arrived. These murders aren’t looking for a gunfight; they’re looking to shoot fish in a barrel. Without the promise of a high body count, their motivation to target a college campus is severely reducedg.

As stated earlier, a free society does not deny the people a right simply because it cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that society will benefit from it. A free society only denies a right if there is empirical evidence that the granting of the right will be detrimental to society. Where is the evidence that concealed carry will be detrimental to college campuses?

Concealed carry hasn’t been detrimental to the rest of Texas. In fact, the violent crime rate in Texas has declined since concealed carry was implementedh. Texas Department of Public Safety data reveals that concealed handgun license holders are approximately five times less likely than the general population of Texas to commit violent crimesi. A Texan is more than twenty times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a Texas concealed handgun license holderj. Both the National Academy of Sciencesk and the Harvard Injury Control Research Centerl agree that concealed carry does not lead to more gun deaths.

Concealed carry hasn’t caused any problems at Colorado State University, the nine degree-offering public colleges (20 campuses) and one public technical college (10 campuses) in Utah, or Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, Virginia. After allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of 100 semesters, not one of those twelve schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides), a single gun accident, or a single gun theft.

WHEREAS mass murder on college campuses is extraordinarily rare8,

This is not about stopping mass murder. This is about allowing trained, licensed adults the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them in virtually all other unsecured locations (locations without metal detectors and X-ray machines) throughout the state of Texas.

WHEREAS the Virginia Tech Review Panel, a bipartisan group appointed to investigate the tragedy at Virginia Tech, specifically recommended a firearms ban on college campuses9,

After stating in its report, “The panel is unaware of any shooting on campus involving people carrying concealed weapons with permits to do so,” the panel bases its position in favor of campus gun bans on four very weak arguments.

The panel report continues, “On the other hand, some students said in their remarks to the panel that they would be uncomfortable going to class with armed students sitting near them or with the professor having a gun.”

This is probably the weakest argument against allowing concealed carry on college campuses. In most “right to carry” states, the rate of concealed carry is about 1% (one person out of 100 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun). In Texas it’s about 1.3% (one person out of 77 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun)m. That means that a University of Texas student is likely to encounter armed concealed handgun license holders anytime he or she leaves campus. A student sitting in a packed 310-seat movie theater is, according to statistics, sharing that theater with at least four concealed handgun license holders. How many college students have their movie going experience ruined by the knowledge that they are sitting near armed individuals? How many college students are afraid to go to a mall or a restaurant, knowing that they’ll likely encounter armed concealed handgun license holders? The word concealed is on the license for a reason. Concealed handguns remain out of sight and out of mindn.

The panel then goes on to assert, “People may get angry even if they are sane, law-abiding citizens; for example, a number of police officers are arrested each year for assaults with weapons they carry off duty, as attested by stories in daily newspapers and other media.”

Are we to assume from this statement that the Virginia Tech Review Panel also supports disarming police officers? The fact that something is possible or has happened in the past does not mean that it is likely. Every segment of society, from law enforcement to clergy, has its bad apples. Concealed carry has fewer bad apples than most. As previously stated, studieso show that Texas concealed handgun license holders are significantly less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes. As also previously stated, twelve U.S. colleges have allowed concealed carry on campus for a combined total of 100 semesters without a single resulting incident of gun violence. In the mid-90s, a comparison of statistics found that Florida concealed handgun license holders were three times LESS likely to be arrested than were New York City police officersp. There is absolutely no evidence that concealed carry leads to an increase in assaults or other violent crimes in the places where it is allowed.

Finally, the panel points out, “Campus police chiefs in Virginia and many chief level officers in the New York City region who were interviewed voiced concern that as the number of weapons on campuses increase, sooner or later there would be accidents or assaults from people who are intoxicated or on drugs who either have a gun or interact with someone who does.”

The fact that the panel interviewed officers in New York City, a metropolitan area that does not allow concealed carry, clearly demonstrates that the panel’s research made no distinction between concealed handgun license holders and unlicensed gun owners. In Texas, almost anybody over the age of 18 can buy a long gun, and almost anybody over the age of 21 can purchase a handgun. However, in order to obtain a concealed handgun license, a person mustq:

- Be at least 21 years of age (18 for members and veterans of the U.S. armed forces). - Not have any felony convictions. - Not have any pending felony charges.

- Not have any Class A or B misdemeanor convictions within the past 5 years. - Not have any pending Class A or B misdemeanor charges. - Not have any domestic violence convictions. - Not have any pending domestic violence charges. - Not be chemically dependent (have a history of drug/alcohol treatment or be a known drug user or alcoholic). - Not be delinquent in child support payments. - Not be subject to a court protective order or restraining order. - Not have been diagnosed by a physician as suffering from a major psychiatric disorder. - Not have been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric problems. - Be a citizen or legal permanent resident of the United States. - Be legally allowed to purchase a handgun, under state and federal law. - Attend a 10- to 15-hour training course, including instruction on state laws pertaining to weapons and the use or threatened use of deadly force; nonviolent dispute resolution; handgun use, proficiency, and safety; and proper storage practices for handguns. - Pass a written test over the material covered in the training course. - Pass a 50-round shooting test very similar to the annual requalification test required of Texas law enforcement officers. - Submit three notarized affidavits; two passport photos; and two official sets of fingerprints (one for the Texas Department of Public Safety and one for the Federal Bureau of Investigation). The fingerprints must be taken by an authorized agent of the state who must also verify and sign the passport photos. - Pay a nonrefundable $140 application fee, not including the cost of the course, ammunition, fingerprinting, or notary fees. The total cost is usually about $275. Some individuals, such as active/retired law enforcement and military personnel qualify for discounted application fees. - Wait 65-150 days for the completion of extensive state and federal fingerprint/background checks.

The reference to individuals “who are intoxicated or on drugs” ignores the fact that legalizing concealed carry on campus would not legalize carrying while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Carrying a handgun while intoxicated would still be illegal, and anyone caught carrying a handgun while under the influence could still be arrested, charged, and sentenced (which would also result in his or her concealed handgun license being revoked)r.

As already stated numerous times, this hasn’t proven to be a problem in the other locations where concealed carry is allowed. The same trained, licensed adults who aren’t getting drunk and assaulting people outside of campus are the same trained, licensed adults who wouldn’t get drunk and assault people on campus.

Finally, the panel suggests, “Of course if numerous people had been rushing around with handguns outside Norris Hall on the morning of April 16, the possibility of accidental or mistaken shootings would have increased significantly.”

The notion of numerous concealed handgun license holders “rushing around with handguns” outside the building where a shooting is taking place is absurd, to say the least. Aside from the fact that, on average, only about 0.5% of individuals in their twenties are licensed to carry concealed handguns, meaning that the rate of concealed carry on a college campus would likely be less than 0.25%, the idea that concealed handgun license holders would, in the face of a campus shooting, run around with drawn weapons—like a bunch of armed, headless chickens—is utterly ridiculous.

Concealed handgun license holders are not amateur police officers. They don’t go looking for bad guys. They’re trained to draw their weapons only when facing an immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm. Texas concealed handgun license holders are specifically taught NOT to draw their weapons and look for an active shooter. They are taught to move away from the sound of gunfires.

On January 22, 2009, the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Law Enforcement released its “Interim Report 2008,” in which the committee issued its official findings on the six issues it was charged with studying during the one-year interim period between the 2007 and 2009 Legislative Sessions. The second of these six issues was the issue of concealed carry on Texas college campuses. In its report, the Texas House Law Enforcement Committee, which—unlike the Virginia Tech Review Panel—looked specifically at the issue of LICENSED concealed carry on TEXAS college campuses, specifically recommended allowing licensed concealed carry on Texas college campusest.

WHEREAS there are numerous other arguments against lifting the existing ban on weapons on campus10,

BE IT RESOLVED that the Student Government of the University of Texas calls on elected officials in Texas to oppose attempts to eliminate campus weapons bans,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Student Government of the University of Texas calls on the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System to fight efforts to eliminate campus weapons bans both at the state level and federally,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution will be provided to at least the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System, the Office of the Chancellor of the University of Texas System, and the Office of the President of the University of Texas at Austin.

Footnotes and Citations

1. "Weapons on Campus, University of Texas at Austin Police Department (UTPD)" <http://www.utexas.edu/police/prevention/weapons.html>

2. UTPD statistics are available at <http://www.utexas.edu/police/reports/statistics/>. City of Austin statistics are available at <http://www.cityofaustin.org/police/censustract/censustract.cfm>. The crime comparison was made on the basis of population and averaged over all years for which statistics were available. If calculated based on jurisdiction size (per square mile instead of per capita), the murder rate for UT (1 in 7.5 years with a population of around 60,000) is still well below that of the City of Austin.

3. Baum & Klaus. 2005. Violent Victimization of College Students, 1995-2002. U.S. Department of Justice. 4. National Alliance on Mental Illness 5. Spicer & Miller. 2000. Suicide acts in 8 states: incidence and case fatality rates by demographics and

method. American Journal of Public Health 90(12): 1885-1891. Miller, Azrael, & Hemenway. 2004. The epidemiology of case fatality rates for suicide in the northeast. Annals of Emergency Medicine 43(6): 723-30. The 82% statistic comes from the first paper; the 91% comes from the second. These numbers agree well with studies from Canada and Australia, and do not vary when different U.S. states are sampled.

6. Center for Disease Control. 2005 is the last year for which statistics are available. 7. As evidence, a gunman who attacked a city council outside of St. Louis, Missouri despite the presence of

armed police officers. (Ratcliffe, Heather, "6 dead in shooting rampage at Kirkwood City Council," St. Louis Today, 27 March 2008.)

This shooter may not have been deterred, but he also didn’t shoot nearly as many people as have been shot in massacres in “gun free zones” (Virginia Tech – 55 shot; Luby’s Cafeteria – 43 shot; Northern Illinois University – 24 shot). In this incident, the gunman shot only seven people. That number might have been even lower had he not had the clear advantage of being able to identify the two uniformed officers as the only legally armed individuals present and target them first. After killing the two officers, he proceeded to shoot four people, killing three city officials and wounding the mayor and a reporter, before additional officers rushed into the chamber and shot him.

8. A pair of videos available from UTPD at <http://www.utexas.edu/police/shotsfired> compare the probability of being involved in a school shooting to the probability of being struck by lightning.

Based on that statistic, a person in Texas is more than twenty times more likely to be involved in a school shooting than to be murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holderu.How could that possibly be viewed as an argument against allowing concealed carry on Texas college campuses?

9. The exact wording is, “The panel recommends that guns be banned on campus grounds and in buildings unless mandated by law” (VI-5, p. 76). The full report is available at <http://www.vtreviewpanel.org/>.

10. Several additional arguments are included: i. College residence halls are easy targets for burglars, and the presence of handguns increases the

financial incentive for burglary. This endangers residents and creates another avenue by which legal guns become illegal guns.

The vulnerability of dorms to theft does not necessitate a campus-wide ban on concealed carry by licensed individuals. There are numerous other options, from community gun lockups to small, private gun safes that can be secured to walls, floors, bed frames, etc. As previously stated, on most Texas campuses very few concealed handgun license holders would live in on-campus housing (again, SCCC estimates no more than 10-20 living in UT on-campus housing).

ii. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (“Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities,” March 2007), college students participate in high-risk behaviors at greater rates than the rest of the population. Driving under the influence of alcohol is a problem emblematic of this tendency. Notably, college students with guns are more likely than other college students to binge drink (Miller, Hemenway, & Wechsler, 1999: "Guns at college," Journal of American College Health 48(1), 7-12).

Aside from the fact that most studies show that these problems are much more prevalent among students under the age of 21v (individuals too young to obtain a CHL unless a member of the armed forces) and the fact that legalizing concealed carry on campus would neither change the rules at off-campus parties or bars (the locations where students over the age of 21 are most likely to consume alcohol) nor legalize carrying a concealed handgun wile intoxicated, the only truly pertinent fact is that THIS IS NOT A DEBATE ABOUT KEEPING GUNS OUT OF THE HANDS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS. This is not a debate about WHO can carry a gun. This is a debate about whether or not the same trained, licensed adults who legally carry concealed handguns without incident virtually everywhere else should be allowed to carry concealed handguns on college campuses.

iii. According to the Daily Texan <http://dailytexanonline.com/2.4489/1.760796>, 5% of the 300,000 CHL (concealed handgun license) holders in Texas are in the 18-26 age range. The 2003 census numbered the Texas high-school-aged population at 1.3 million; conservatively, those become at least a million college-aged individuals in Texas today. Based on these numbers, the probability of a handgun being 'at the right place at the right time' on a Texas college campus is less than 1 in 67. For a shooting involving 10 individuals, that rises to 14%--meaning a CHL holder would be present in only one in seven shootings, unlikely sufficient for deterrence. Even were a CHL holder present, there is little guarantee that he or she could prevent the taking of life. Finally, 1.5% of UT students translates to 500 students with guns--and thus 500 more opportunities for accidents, theft, suicide, and crimes of anger.

The math used here doesn’t make any sense (the author assumes a higher rate of concealed carry among UT Students than among the general population of Texas, and the manner in which the odds are calculated is pretty much incoherent), but that’s not really the point. This is the point (and it can’t be said enough): IN A FREE SOCIETY, THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS NEVER ON THOSE SEEKING THE GRANTING OF A RIGHT, TO PROVE THAT IT WILL BENEFIT SOCIETY. THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ALWAYS ON THOSE SEEKING THE DENIAL OF A RIGHT, TO PROVE THAT IT WILL BE DETRIMENTAL TO SOCIETY.

REBUTTAL FOOTNOTES AND CITATIONS

a Violent crimes per 1,000 residents (http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/austin/west-lake-hills/): Austin: 5.51, West Lake Hills: 0.49

b According to the annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, 57.8% of all aggravated assaults and 63.2% of all rapes/sexual assaults occur between the hours of 6 PM and 6 AM (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict.htm).

cLocations Where Concealed Carry is Prohibited in the State of Texas (per §46.03 and §46.035 of the Texas Penal Code)

1. On the premises of a bar (an establishment that earns 51% or more of its income from the sale of alcohol for on-site consumption). Bars are required to post red "51%" signs at each entrance.

2. On the premises where a high school, collegiate, or professional sporting event or interscholastic event is taking place. 3. On the premises of a correctional facility (jail, prison, youth correctional facility, etc). 4. "On the physical premises of a school or educational institution, any grounds or building on which an activity sponsored

by a school or educational institution is being conducted, or a passenger transportation vehicle of a school or institution,

whether the school or educational education is public or private, unless pursuant to written regulations or written authorization of the institution."

5. On the premises of a poling place on election day or during early voting. 6. "On the premises of any government court or offices utilized by the court, unless pursuant to written regulations or

written authorization of the court." 7. On the premises of a race track. 8. In the secured area of an airport. 9. Within 1,000 feet of a place of execution on a day that a sentence of death is set to be imposed. 10. On property where a legally enforceable 30.06 sign is posted. In order to be legally enforceable, the sign must meet the

size, language, and posting requirements (including that the property cannot be owned or leased by a governmental entity) mentioned in §30.06 of the Texas Penal Code.

11. In any federal "gun free zone" (i.e., federal buildings, post offices, etc). 12. Anywhere while the CHL holder is "intoxicated" (state law doesn't define "intoxicated" in reference to concealed carry,

so it's essentially at the discretion of law enforcement).

In 2000, then-Governor George W. Bush ratified an amendment to Texas Penal Code §46.035 (§46.035[i]) that removed the statutory prohibitions against concealed carry in hospitals, amusement parks, houses of worship, and governmental meetings. Under the amended law, it is only an offense for a concealed handgun license holder to carry a concealed handgun in a location falling under one of those four categories if each entrance to the location is posted with the specific sign provided for in Texas Penal Code §30.06 (the same sign that can be used to prohibit concealed carry on any private property).

In 2003, Governor Rick Perry ratified an amendment to Texas Penal Code §30.06 (§30.06[e]), prohibiting the use of the sign provided for in Texas Penal Code §30.06 to prohibit concealed carry on property owned or leased by any state or municipal governmental entity. This means that, except for locations where concealed carry is statutorily prohibited (i.e., courthouses and schools), concealed carry cannot be prohibited in state and municipal buildings or offices. Essentially, municipalities are preempted from creating their own restrictions on concealed carry.

According to Texas Penal Code §46.035(f)(3), “‘Premises’ means a building or a portion of a building. The term does not include any public or private driveway, street, sidewalk or walkway, parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area.” Thismeans that concealed carry is only prohibited inside the buildings of college campuses. Concealed carry is currently legal on the sidewalks, walkways, parking lots, parking garages, and other public, outdoor areas of Texas college campuses. However, colleges are currently allowed to place further restrictions on concealed carry by students and employees, as a condition of enrollment or employment.

d http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-mentalhealth2-2009mar02,0,5632789.column

e “Youth and Adolescent Suicide: A Guide for Educators,” Oregon Resiliency Project, University of Oregon, 2003; After Suicide: A Ray of Hope for Those Left Behind, Eleanora Betsy Ross, 2001

f This requires some rather complicated calculations, but you can get a very rough estimate this way: In the fall of 2007, UT had 8,157 students living in on-campus housing (http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/reports/DocFetch.cfm?DocID=1640&Format=PDF). During that same time period, 37.8% of UT undergraduates were over the age of 21 (http://www.utexas.edu/academic/oir/statistical_handbook/07-08/pdf/0708students.pdf). If one assumes that students over the age of 21 live in on-campus housing at the same rate as students under the age of 21—eventhough observation clearly indicates that students over the age of 21 live in on campus housing at a much LOWER rate than students under the age of 21—you can estimate 3,083 students over the age of 21 living in UT on-campus housing in the fall of 2007(obviously, the actual number was much lower). Assuming that most, if not all, of those 3,083 students were under the age of 30, and considering that most estimates put the rate of concealed carry among individuals in their twenties at about 0.5%, you reach a very rough estimate of approximately 15 concealed handgun license holders living in UT on-campus housing. The rate of concealed carry among military personnel under the age of 21 is not factored into this equation because, to date, only about 100 Texas concealed handgun licenses have been issued, statewide, to military personnel under the age of 21 (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/demographics.htm); therefore, the rate of concealed carry among military personnel under the age of 21 is too statistically inconsequential to create any significant variation in such arough estimate.

g http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-705214434098916838&hl=en

h http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/txcrime.htm

i Five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm)

jAverage number of persons murdered/negligently killed each year by concealed handgun license holders in the state of Texas, based on a five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm): 2.2; Average population of Texas from 2002-2006, per U.S. Census Bureau yearly estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html): 22,475,812; Odds of being murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder in the state of Texas in a given year: 1 in 10,216,278; Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year, per the U.S. National Weather Service, “Medical Aspects of Lightning,” Dr. Marry Ann Cooper (http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm): 1 in 500,000

k “Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review,” National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, 2005 (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=R1)

l “Evaluation of State-level Firearms Policies,” Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2006 (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/files/HICRC_Research_Projects_2001-2006.pdf)

m Estimated 2008 Population of Texas, per the U.S. Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html): 24,326,974; Active Texas concealed handgun license holders as of 12/31/2008, per the Texas Department of Public Safety (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/PDF/ActLicAndInstr/ActiveLicandInstr2008.pdf): 314,574

n A concealed handgun license holder who displays his or her handgun or otherwise intentionally reveals that he or she is carrying a concealed handgun is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor (TX PC §46.035 [a]). If the weapon is displayed in a manner intended to cause alarm, the license holder is also guilty of a Class B misdemeanor (TX PC §42.01[a][8]), unless the incident takes place on school property, in which case the license holder is guilty of a third degree felony (TX EDC §37.125[a]).

o “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association

p A comparison of statistics on arrests of police officers, published by the Washington Post on 08/28/94, to Florida Department of Law Enforcement statistics submitted to the Governor on 03/15/95

q §411.172 of the Texas Government Code

rA concealed handgun license holder who carries a handgun while intoxicated is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor (TX PC

§46.035[d]).

s http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5127232031349751989&hl=en

t The relevant section of the report can be downloaded here: http://www.concealedcampus.org/pdf/tx_house_le_committee.pdfThe full text of the report can be downloaded here: http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/reports/80interim/LawEnforcement80th.pdf

uAverage number of persons murdered/negligently killed each year by concealed handgun license holders in the state of Texas, based on a five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm): 2.2; Average population of Texas from 2002-2006, per U.S. Census Bureau yearly estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html): 22,475,812; Odds of being murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license holder in the state of Texas in a given year: 1 in 10,216,278; Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year, per the U.S. National Weather Service, “Medical Aspects of Lightning,” Dr. Marry Ann Cooper (http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm): 1 in 500,000

v http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12503979?dopt=Abstract

Legalizing Concealed Carry on Campus is a Safe Bet

By W. Scott Lewis

In June 1975, every indicator predicted a good summer for America’s seaside tourism industry—the oil embargo had been lifted, the Vietnam War was over, and the stock market was recovering. Instead, coastal tourism declined that summer, primarily due to growing concerns about shark attacks. Ironically, there were no fatal shark attacks in the U.S. in 1975. The national epidemic of galeophobia (fear of sharks) originated not with any real-life incident but with the June release of the movie Jaws. A terrifying fantasy caused otherwise rational people to lose sight of reason and ignore the laws of probability (you’re almost twice as likely to pick the winning Powerball numbers as to be killed by a shark in U.S. waters1). A similar epidemic of baseless paranoia now grips Texas. But the perceived threat isn’t sharks; it’s concealed handgun license holders. In response to Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth’s proposal of a bill that would allow holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses (CHLs) to carry concealed handguns on college campuses, opponents have dusted off their own terrifying fantasies—the same contrived, hypothetical scenarios they used, unsuccessfully, 14 years ago to oppose the passage of Texas’s concealed handgun licensing law. And just like the hysteria that followed the release of Jaws, the hysteria about the dangers of allowing “concealed carry” on Texas college campuses has no basis in fact.

Approximately one out of every 77 Texans is licensed to carry a concealed handgun2; yet, the annual odds of being murdered or negligently killed by a CHL holder in Texas are only about one in 10.2 million3. If this bill’s opponents are genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of college students, they should focus on protecting students from more likely threats, such as the threat of being killed in an automobile accident (one in 6,5004), the threat of being struck by lightning (one in 500,0005), or the threat of being killed by falling airplane parts (one in 9.3 million6). Viewed from a pragmatic standpoint, there seems to be no rational basis for their rabid opposition to Senator Wentworth’s bill. Some opponents offer the rationale that college campuses often play host to heated debates. Apparently, they believe that heated debates never take place in churches or office buildings or between members of the Texas Legislature (concealed carry is allowed in the Texas Capitol).

The 11 U.S. colleges that currently allow concealed carry on campus—all nine public colleges in the state of Utah, Colorado State University, and Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA)—have yet to see any classroom debates escalate into shootouts. In fact, after allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of more than 80 semesters, not one of those schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence, including threats, suicides, and accidents.

Many individuals on both sides of the gun control debate view Texas’s concealed handgun licensing program as a beacon of efficiency and compromise that provides a win/win scenario for all involved. In a November 24 radio interview7, Kristen Comer, Executive Director of Washington CeaseFire (a Seattle-based gun control advocacy group), stated, “Texas has a great program for their concealed carry permit holders. In order to get your concealed carry permit in Texas, you need to go through a firearm training course [in which] they specifically talk about being...confronted with the choice of ‘Do I take out my gun?’” Studies8 suggest that Texas CHL holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes. The National Academy of Sciences9 and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center10 agree that concealed carry does not lead to more gun deaths. In light of such findings, what is the justification for denying CHL holders the right to protect themselves on college campuses? Why should a graduate student who is able to defend herself when leaving a local health club not be able to defend herself when leaving a student rec center? Why should a twenty-two-year-old undergrad not be allowed the same level of personal protection at the school library as at the public library? Why deny a professor who is able to defend himself at a theater on Saturday and at a church on Sunday the ability to defend himself in his classroom on Monday? Adults, age 21 and above, who have gone through the training, testing, and extensive background checks required to obtain a Texas concealed handgun license should be allowed the same level of personal protection on college campuses that current laws allow them virtually everywhere else.

W. Scott Lewis, an Austin-based writer and gun rights advocate, previously served as the national media coordinator for the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

1 Odds of dying in a shark attack, per the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (http://www.hcra.harvard.edu/quiz.ht.ml): one in 280 million; odds of winning the Powerball Lottery, per the Multi-State Lottery Association (http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp): one in 146 million

2 Estimated 2008 Population of Texas, per the U.S. Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html): 24,326,974; Active Texas concealed handgun license holders as of 12/31/2008, per the Texas Department of Public Safety (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/PDF/ActLicAndInstr/ActiveLicandInstr2008.pdf):314,574

3 Average number of persons murdered/negligently killed each year by concealed handgun license holders in the state of Texas, based on a five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm): 2.2; Average population of Texas from 2002-2006, per U.S. Census Bureau yearly estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html): 22,475,812

4 National Safety Council (http://www.nsc.org/research/odds.aspx)

5 U.S. National Weather Service, “Medical Aspects of Lightning,” Dr. Marry Ann Cooper (http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm)

6 B. Combs and P. Slovic, “Newspaper coverage of causes of death,” Journalism Quarterly 56 (1979), 837-849; “Death Odds,” Newsweek, Sepember 24, 1990, p. 10; Ruscio, J., Clear Thinking with Psychology: Separating Sense from Nonsense, 2002, Pacific Grove, CA, Wadsworth

7 The Dori Monson Show, News Talk 97.3 KIRO FM, Seattle, WA (http://www.mynorthwest.com/resources/audio_headlines/audio_player.php?a=4445&f=/kiro/2008/11/11242008140012.mp3)

8 “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News,September, 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association; Five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm)

9 “Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review,” National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, 2005 (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=R1)

10 “Evaluation of State-level Firearms Policies,” Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2006 (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/files/HICRC_Research_Projects_2001-2006.pdf)

Concealed Carry on Campus

By Joseph Boudreau

In listening to the opposing rhetoric surrounding Senator Jeff Wentworth’s forthcoming bill aimed at legalizing concealed carry (of handguns) on Texas college campuses, one might come to believe that the question before the Texas Legislature is whether or not college students are mature enough to carry guns and/or whether or not concealed carry would prevent campus shootings. In reality, neither of those questions addresses the issue at hand. At its heart, this debate is about whether or not there is just cause to deny trained, licensed adults—age 21 and above—the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that they currently enjoy in locations such as churches, banks, restaurants, liquor stores, movie theaters, shopping malls, state and municipal offices, and even the Texas Capitol.

The rate of concealed carry in the state of Texas is approximately 1.3%, meaning that approximately one Texan out of every 77 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun. Yet, it’s highly unlikely that you know anyone who’s been attacked or threatened by a Texas concealed handgun license (CHL) holder. That’s because, according to Texas Department of Public Safety statistics, a CHL holder is five times less likely than a non-license holder to commit a violent crime. In fact, in the state of Texas you’re 20 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a CHL holder.

Colorado State University, all nine public colleges in the state of Utah, and Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, VA, have, for a combined total of more than 80 semesters, allowed concealed carry on campus, without a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides), without a single gun accident, and without a single gun theft.

Legalizing concealed carry on college campuses would not change the laws governing who is able to buy a gun or who is able to obtain a CHL. It would not change the laws at off-campus parties or bars, the places where students old enough to obtain a CHL are most likely to consume alcohol. And it would not remove current prohibitions against carrying a handgun while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

It is highly unlikely that, in the event of a campus shooting, the presence of a few CHL holders (less 0.2% of students) would escalate the situation or lead to greater loss of life. A 1997 FBI study found that most shootouts last less than 10 seconds. It’s inconceivable to think that nine seconds of exchanged gunfire between two individuals could lead to more fatalities than a nine-minute, uncontested execution-style massacre like the one that occurred at Virginia Tech.

It’s also highly unlikely that, in such a scenario, the presence of CHL holders would cause problems for police. The Texas concealed handgun licensing course teaches applicants to only draw their weapons if faced with an immanent threat of death or serious bodily harm. CHL holders are specifically taught never to seek out an active shooter. And law enforcement officers are trained to expect armed bad guys AND armed good guys—be they undercover/off-duty police officers or CHL holders—in tactical situations.

It doesn’t matter whether the threat is a deranged gunman, a sexual predator, or a bigot looking to commit a hate crime—people have the right to defend themselves. Why should trained, licensed adults be afforded less right to personal protection on college campuses than in the rest of society? If there is no evidence to suggest that allowing concealed carry on college campuses would cause problems, and if it has the potential to help people, why not allow it? Why not take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent?

Joseph Boudreau, a Biology sophomore at the University of Texas, serves as the campus leader for the UT Austin chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

PRINTED IN THE DAILY TEXAN—UT’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER—ON APRIL 22, 2009

Dear Editor:

The April 21 article “Concealed weapons restricted at Capitol” is, without a doubt, the most lopsided, misleading article in The Daily Texan’s long series of lopsided articles and misleading editorials on the issue of concealed carry on Texas college campuses.

The only place in the Texas Capitol where concealed carry is restricted is in the viewing galleries of the House and Senate, when the House and Senate are convened. During those times, those two small balconies are secured with metal detectors and armed state troopers.

Legislators with concealed-handgun licenses are still allowed to carry concealed handguns on the floors of the House and Senate, and the metal detectors securing the galleries are turned off as soon as the bodies adjourn each day.

Concealed carry is always allowed throughout the rest of the Capitol, including in the committee chamber where the Texas House Committee on Public Safety recently held the public hearing on Texas House Bill 1893, the “guns on campus” bill.

In fact, Texas legislators aren’t even allowed to restrict concealed carry in their own Capitol offices.Therefore, it’s more than a little unfair to suggest that they’re looking to require anything of public colleges that they don’t already require of themselves.

Any thinking person realizes that it is absurd to compare an open college campus the size of a small city to an easily secured area like a balcony, where metal detectors can ensure that the area is gun free in more than name only, and where visitors are never out of the sight of armed state troopers.

Jeff ShiComputer sciences juniorStudents for Concealed Carry on Campus Longhorn chapter president

The Daily Texan removed this portion of the letter before publishing it:

In a February 17 interview with News 8 Austin, Rep. Charlie Geren, Chairman of the House Administration Committee—the committee charged with overseeing security measures in the House gallery—explained the presence of the metal detectors, which were installed at the beginning of this legislative session, by stating, "The big challenge for DPS is not protecting against someone with a handgun, it's someone who comes in and wants to blow people up."

Rep. Geren ended the February 17 interview by stating, “"I'm thinking [the metal detectors] will probably be there until the end of session, and then we will relook at the policy.”

Rebutting “Why the Legislature should keep concealed weapons off Texas campuses”

By W. Scott Lewis

In a May 8, 2009, op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, titled “Why the Legislature should keep concealed weapons off Texas campuses,” four anti-gun activists (anyone who is not familiar with Colin Goddard, Elita Habtu, Omar Samaha, and John Woods can confirm through a quick Internet search that their anti-gun activities with groups like The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and ProtestEasyGuns.com extend well beyond keeping guns off of college campuses) contend that Texas’s concealed handgun licensing laws actually lead to more crime. They back up this assertion with the lone supporting statement, “Professor John J. Donohue of Yale Law School found that, if anything, concealed carry laws like Texas' ‘are associated with uniform increases in crime.’”

That statementi by Professor Donahue refers to his efforts, along with Yale Law professor Ian Ayresii, to discredit studiesiii by John Lott and David Mustard purporting to show that right-to-carry/shall-issue concealed handgun licensing laws lead to a decrease in crime. The study by Donahue and Ayres seeks to discredit the “more guns, less crime” assertion by extending the statistical model used in Lott and Mustard’s 1977-1992 study through 1997.

It’s important to note that the study by Donahue and Ayres focused on the nation as a whole, not on Texas. Even more significantly, it factors in only the first two years of Texas’s concealed handgun licensing program. Clearly, this study is not a scientific or mathematical analysis of the impact of Texas’s concealed handgun licensing laws.

Furthermore, Carlisle E. Moody, Professor of Economics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Thomas B. Marvell, attorney-sociologist and director of Justec Research in Williamsburg, Virginia, thoroughly rebut the findings of Donahue and Ayres, in their article “The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws,” in volume 5, issue 3 (September 2008) of EconJournal Watch. Moody and Marvell state:

While reading Ayres and Donohue’s 2003 article in the Stanford Law Review, we noticed that their analysis did not prove what they said it proved. They claimed that their model proved that shall-issue laws increased crime. Our conclusions are as follows.

Many articles have been published finding that shall-issue laws reduce crime. Only one article, by Ayres and Donohue who employ a model that combines a dummy variable with a post-law trend, claims to find that shall-issue laws increase crime. However, the only way that they can produce the result that shall-issue laws increase crime is to confine the span of analysis to five years. We show, using their own estimates, that if they had extended their analysis by one more year, they would have concluded that these laws reduce crime. Since most states with shall-issue laws have had these laws on the books for more than five years, and the law will presumably remain on the books for some time, the only relevant analysis extends beyond five years.

Though several analysts have credibly rebutted the “more guns, less crime” claims of Lott/Mustard and others, by using statistics to show that concealed carry laws have no statistically significant impact on crime rates, no peer-reviewed studyiv has found that licensed concealed carry increases crime.

The fact remains that all credible evidencev on the issue suggests that Texas concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes. A person is twenty times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a Texas concealed handgun license holdervi.

i Donahue, John J. “The Impact of Concealed-Carry Laws.” Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence. Ed. Jens Ludwig, Philip J. Cook. 2003. 290.

ii In 2007 Ian Ayres was found to have plagiarized nine passages of Super Crunchers, his book on statistical analysis. (http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/21638;http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_diaries/plagiarism_yours_mine_and_ayres)

iii Lott, John R. and David B. Mustard. “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns.” The Journal of Legal Studies, 26. 1997. 1-68

Lott, John R. More Guns, Less Crime. University of Chicago Press. 1998

iv The Donahue/Ayres study cited by the op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman appeared in a student-edited journal (Stanford Law Review) and was not peer-reviewed.

v “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News,September, 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association; Five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm)

vi Average number of persons murdered/negligently killed each year by concealed handgun license holders in the state of Texas, based on a five year average (2002-2006) of Texas Department of Public Safety statistics on criminal convictions of CHL holders (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm): 2.2; Average population of Texas from 2002-2006, per U.S. Census Bureau yearly estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html): 22,475,812; Odds of being killed by a Texas concealed handgun license holder in a given year (22,475,812 divided by 2.2): one in 10,216,278; Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year, according to the U.S. National Weather Service, “Medical Aspects of Lightning,” Dr. Marry Ann Cooper (http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm): one in 500,000.

Rebutting “Why the Legislature should keep concealed weapons off Texas campuses”

Part 2

The May 8, 2009, op-ed “Why the Legislature should keep concealed weapons off Texas campuses,” published in the Austin American-Statesman, dismisses a recent pro-HB 1893 editorial by five college professors, stating, “the authors failed to note a 2000 news article reporting roughly 3,400 Texas concealed handgun license-holders arrested or convicted of crimes including double murder, armed robbery and kidnaping [sic].”

The “news article” in question was actually a press release by the Violence Policy Center, one of America’s most radical anti-gun organizations. The press release garnered this op-ed rebuttal in the September 27, 2000, edition of the San Antonio Express-News.

San Antonio Express-News: Commentary9/27/00

Comment: Licensed gun owners are model Texans

The malicious "License to Kill" press releases issued recently by the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., misrepresent the truth about concealed handgun license holders in Texas.

Analysts at the Violence Policy Center cite arrest statistics to argue falsely that the handgun program in Texas is a failure.

However, an unbiased comparison of arrest rates of concealed handgun license holders with arrest rates of all adults in Texas proves that the 214,000 Texans with the licenses, as a group, remain the exemplary citizens they were when they received their licenses.

(The basic data for this comparison comes from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau. The arrest rates were calculated using average annual population figures and average number of annual active concealed-handgun licenses).

First, the center's implication that there should never be an arrest among the 214,000 concealed handgun license holders in Texas is ludicrous. The arrest rate of clergy is not zero.

Second, the center does not differentiate between felony arrests and misdemeanor arrests.

Of the 3,679 total arrests among concealed handgun license holders in Texas for a four year period from 1996 to 2000, 889 are felony arrests. The remaining 2,790 arrests involve less serious misdemeanor charges.

Third, arrest does not mean guilt. Of the 474 felony arrests that have been resolved, fewer than half resulted in convictions.

Fourth, the data show that average annual arrests for all crimes among all adult males in Texas (9,508 per 100,000) is 14 times greater than the rate for concealed handgun license holders (671 per 100,000).

The violent crime arrest rate of all adult men in Texas (306 per 100,000) is five times greater than the violent crime arrest rate of concealed handgun license holders (62).

Furthermore, since Jan. 1, 1996, a total of three concealed handgun license holders have been convicted of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter. Only at the Violence Policy Center do three convictions in four years add up to a "License to Kill."

Since 80.5 percent of concealed handgun license holders in Texas are men, these comparisons are valid, and it is clear that the center's insinuations of a crime wave among this population are false and absurd.

To the disappointment of the Violence Policy Center and other gun control advocates, the Texas concealed handgun license program is a success and a model for other states, such as Colorado, that are considering licensing concealed handguns.

It proves that citizens who are screened by state and federal law enforcement and properly trained can be trusted to carry concealed handguns for their own protection and the protection of others.

Why does the Violence Policy Center continue its attack on Texas?

The answer probably lies in an unwillingness to present the whole truth, not to mention a callous and dangerous disregard for the lives and safety of the people of Texas by extremists for whom gun control has become a religion.

Carl M. Hubbard, Ph.D. is a professor of business administration at Trinity University.

PRINTED IN THE DAILY TEXAN—UT’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER—ON MAY 12, 2009

Dear Editor:

It is bad enough that anti-gun activist John Woods continues to use lies and misinformation to make his case against allowing concealed handgun license holders to carry concealed handguns on Texas college campuses; however, it is absolutely deplorable that a reputable student newspaper like The Daily Texan continues to provide him with an unrestricted, unedited forum to espouse such lies.

In his May 11, 2009, op-ed, Mr. Woods states, “How do you feel about handguns in elementary schools, preschools, hospitals and bars? UT’s campus includes all of these, and today, the potential passage of HB 1893—a bill to allow concealed carry of guns on school grounds—would legalize guns in these locations.”

The suggestion that the passage of HB 1893 would change the rules at on-campus elementary schools, preschools, hospitals, and bars is patently false.

HB 1893 simply states, "[An institution] of higher education in this state may not adopt any rule, regulation, or other provision prohibiting license holders from carrying handguns on the campus of the institution." Prohibiting an institution from adopting its own rules or regulations restricting concealed carry does not mean that state laws restricting concealed carry no longer apply to that institution.

Per subsection 46.03(a)(1) of the Texas Penal Code, concealed carry would still be prohibited on the premises of any primary or secondary school, regardless of whether or not the school is located on the campus of a college or university.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that, contrary the claims of Mr. Woods, the UT elementary school is actually located off-campus, on East 6th Street.

Under the new law, a childcare facility on a college campus would simply fall under the same regulations as any childcare facility at any other state office, as well as any private childcare facility not posted with a sign, pursuant to subsection 30.06 of the Texas Penal Code, prohibiting concealed carry on the premises.

Per subsections §30.06(e), §46.035(b)(4), and §46.035(I) of the Texas Penal Code, hospitals would still be allowed to restrict or prohibit concealed carry on the premises.

And per subsection 46.035(b)(1), concealed carry would still be prohibited on the premises of any business that derives 51% or more of its income from the sale or service of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, regardless of whether or not the business is located on a college campus.

I’m sure that debating this type of controversial issue is much easier when you’re willing to fabricate facts to support your case, but those of us supporting HB 1893 on the UT campus would prefer that, in the future, our opponents and, more significantly, our student newspaper stick to the truth.

Sincerely,

Jeff Shi PresidentStudents for Concealed Carry on Campus, Longhorn Chapter Computer Science Junior

Current and Retired University of Texas Police Officers Support Concealed Carry on Campus

By W. Scott Lewis

After months of parroting gun control advocates’ claim that Texas Senate Bill 1164 and Texas House Bill 1893, both aimed at legalizing the licensed concealed carry of handguns on Texas college campuses, are universally opposed by university law enforcement, two Austin news outlets recently revealed that some current and retired members of the University of Texas at Austin Police Department (UTPD) actually support the measure.

In a May 12, 2009, article on the Austin American-Statesman website, Statesman staff writer Ralph K.M. Haurwitz writes that retired UTPD police lieutenant Ronald Thomas called him, in response to an earlier article by Haurwitz, to inform him that not all university police officers oppose the legislation. According to Haurwitz, “Thomas favors allowing concealed handguns on campus because, he said, an armed person could prevent or cut short a tragedy well before campus police arrive at the scene.”

A May 13, 2009, article in The Daily Texan, the University of Texas at Austin student newspaper, quotes UTPD Chief of Police Robert Dahlstrom as saying, “I know a lot of my employees have views on both sides of [concealed carry].” Chief Dahlstrom then goes on to say that most officers are afraid to speak out on the issue because they’re not clear on what constitutes “lobbying,” which is prohibited by their terms of employment.

Clearly, university police officers do not view this issue in the black and white terms depicted by gun control advocates. Like San Marcos Chief of Police Howard Williams and Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin, both of whom recently voiced support for legalizing licensed concealed carry on Texas college campuses, some university police officers apparently see the merit in allowing trained, licensed, carefully screened adults—age 21 and above—the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current law allows them in virtually all other unsecured locations (locations without metal detectors) throughout the state of Texas.

Unpublished SCCC Opinion Pieces

About LouisianaHouse Bill 199

(May-June 2008)

Higher Education Official Ignores the Facts of Concealed Carry

by W. Scott Lewis

In recent weeks Dr. E. Joseph Savoie, Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education, has repeatedly voiced his opposition to Louisiana House Bill 199, which would allow concealed handgun permit holders to carry concealed handguns on Louisiana college campuses. Though articulate and sincere, Dr. Savoie’s arguments lack substance.

The study "Guns and Juvenile Crime," cited by Dr. Savoie as evidence that carrying a gun does not make a person less likely to be victimized, is actually a study into the problems of illegal gun possession and gun crime by high school students—problems strongly associated with gang activity. Whether or not a teenage gang member is safer because he or she illegally carries a gun has absolutely no bearing on whether or not trained, licensed adults should be allowed to legally carry concealed handguns on college campuses.

To further support his position that “concealed carry” is ineffective, Dr. Savoie cites a quote by John Vernick, Co-Director of the notoriously anti-gun John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy, questioning whether or not concealed carry saves lives.

Regardless of whether or not concealed carry saves a statistically significant number of lives, there is one point on which most research organizations, including the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the National Academy of Sciences, agree—Concealed carry does not lead to more gun deaths. It does not make things any worse.

Assuming that a free society only denies the people a right if there is empirical evidence that granting that right will do more harm than good, questions about concealed carry’s effectiveness as a crime deterrent are not, in an of themselves, sufficient reason to prohibit it on college campuses.

Contrary to what Dr. Savoie might believe, firearms are not tightly controlled on college campuses. On the contrary, colleges typically adopt an honor system approach to regulating firearm possession. In the absence of metal detectors and X-ray machines, a person can walk onto campus carrying virtually anything he or she chooses. And if he or she is determined to carry a gun onto campus, no policy or law is going to stop him or her from doing so.

Currently, the only persons deterred from carrying guns onto campus are the law-abiding citizens who've met the requirements to obtain a concealed handgun license. They are at least twenty-one years of age, have attended the required training course, have passed both the written and shooting tests, and have undergone extensive fingerprint and background checks.

Dr. Savoie claims that evidence suggests that concealed carry on college campuses might escalate everyday disagreements; however, he has yet to cite any such evidence. Surely he's not referring to the numerous studies showing that concealed handgun permit holders are five times less likely than non-permit holders to commit violent crimes. Surely he's not referring to evidence garnered from the forty "right to carry" states, all of which have very liberal concealed carry laws and none of which have seen a resulting increase in their rates of gun crime (most have seen a decrease). Surely he's not referring to the evidence showing that Louisiana’s movie theaters, office

buildings, grocery stores, shopping malls, fast food restaurants, and banks have not seen a resulting increase in gun crime, even though one out of every 165 Louisiana residents is now licensed to carry a concealed handgun in those and a multitude of other places. And he can't be referring to the evidence showing that eleven U.S. colleges—Colorado State University, all nine public colleges in Utah, and Blue Ridge Community College in Virginia—have allowed concealed carry on campus for a combined total of more than seventy semesters, without a single resulting incident of gun violence, without a single gun accident, and without a single gun theft.

Dr. Savoie points to the numerous security initiatives already implemented by Louisiana colleges, as if to suggest that concealed carry is somehow incompatible with other security measures. How will having better trained police officers five hundred yards away help a student sitting in a classroom when a gunman walks through the only door and opens fire? How will receiving a text message alert save a professor hiding under a desk, listening to gunshots? How do faculty training and campus security cameras help a 105 lb. woman who encounters a 225 lb. assailant while walking to her off-campus apartment after leaving a night class?

If HB 199 is passed, concealed carry will discretely supplement existing campus security measures and eventually be forgotten by all but those few who choose to “carry.”

W. Scott Lewis, a freelance writer from Austin, TX, served as National Media Coordinator for the 30,000-member, non-partisan collegiate organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus during the 2007-2008 school year.

Dear Editor:

On Wednesday, June 4, Louisiana state representatives will finally vote on Representative Ernest Wooton’s much editorialized House Bill 199, which seeks to grant concealed handgun permit holders the right to carry concealed handguns on college campuses.

Unable to erode HB 199’s support with fact-based evidence, some opponents have suggested that its passage might threaten the heart and soul of the South—football. Opponents have persuaded LSU head football coach Les Miles and the rest of the LSU coaching staff that the presence of “concealed carry” on campus might jeopardize recruiting by making the parents of prospective recruits nervous.

This argument ignores the fact that five NCAA Division I schools already allow concealed carry on campus. It also ignores the fact that coaches cannot currently guarantee parents that student athletes won't wander beyond the sidewalk borders of campus and visit the surrounding grocery stores, shopping malls, movie theaters, banks, and fast food restaurants where one out of every 165 Louisiana residents is licensed to carry a concealed handgun (and did so without incident in 2007).

This argument also infers that parents should be more concerned with trained, licensed, carefully screened adults (age twenty-one and above) who want to LEGALLY carry guns on campus than with the criminals who might already be carrying guns on campus ILLEGALLY. Until LSU installs metal detectors and X-ray machines at every entrance and begins screening all 35,000 students and faculty members on a daily basis, no coach or administrator can guarantee parents a gun free campus.

Sincerely,

W. Scott Lewis Austin, TX

Dear Editor:

On June 4 state representatives will vote on House Bill 199, which seeks to grant concealed handgun permit (CHP) holders the right to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. Contrary to opponents’ claims, there is absolutely no evidence that the passage of this bill will make colleges less safe.

Surrounding every college campus in Louisiana are grocery stores, shopping malls, movie theaters, banks, and fast food restaurants where CHP holders legally carry concealed handguns every day. “Concealed carry” has not caused problems in those places, despite the fact that one out of every 165 Louisiana residents is a CHP holder. Since 1996 only 25 Louisiana CHPs have been revoked for felony offenses. There was not a single documented death or accident involving a Louisiana CHP holder in all of 2007.

Eleven U.S. colleges (Colorado State University, all nine public colleges in Utah, and Blue Ridge Community College in Virginia) allow concealed carry on campus. After a combined total of seventy-two semesters, not one of those schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence, a single gun accident, or a single gun theft.

CHP holders are trained, licensed, carefully screened adults (age twenty-one and above) who needn’t be feared.

Sincerely,

W. Scott Lewis Austin, TX

When Debating Guns on Campus, the Facts Often Get Lost in the Fray

By W. Scott Lewis

On Wednesday, June 4, Louisiana state representatives will finally have the chance to vote on Representative Ernest Wooton’s controversial and much editorialized House Bill 199, which seeks to grant concealed handgun permit (CHP) holders the right to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. Rep. Wooton was forced to postpone the vote, initially scheduled for May 12, after opponents—apparently unclear on the difference between college and middle school—bussed in a gaggle of early- and pre-teen school children wearing “Stop the killing” and “Keep guns off our campuses” T-shirts, creating a circus-like atmosphere in the House chamber and destroying any chance for a rational debate.

Though Wooton, a former Plaquemines Parish Sheriff, will undoubtedly meet strong resistance from former gang leader and current Stop the Killing, Inc., president Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed and State Representative Barbara Norton of Shreveport, proponents of fact-based legislation should find solace in the knowledge that House members, having had an extra three weeks to review the facts of this bill, will be better prepared to see past the emotional rhetoric of its detractors.

Though opponents’ arguments paint shocking images of classrooms running red with blood, such dire predictions lose resonance when challenged with the facts.Surrounding every college campus in Louisiana are grocery stores, shopping malls, movie theaters, banks, and fast food restaurants where CHP holders legally carry concealed handguns every day. “Concealed carry” has not caused problems in those places, despite the fact that approximately one out of every 165 Louisiana residents holds a concealed handgun permit.

Of the 27,422 concealed handgun permits issued by the Louisiana State Police since 1996, only 25 have been revoked for felony offenses. According to the Louisiana State Police, there was not a single documented death or accident involving a concealed handgun permit holder in all of 2007.

Those who claim that college campuses are “special” or different than surrounding areas would do well to look at the eleven U.S. colleges (Colorado State University, all nine public colleges in Utah, and Blue Ridge Community College in Virginia) that currently allow concealed carry on campus. After allowing concealed carry for a combined total of seventy-two semesters, not one of those schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence, a single gun accident, or a single gun theft.

Concealed carry’s success can be attributed in part to the screening and training processes in place. In Louisiana, as in most states, only adults—age twenty-one and above—who attend a state-mandated training course, pass both a written and a shooting test, and undergo extensive state and federal fingerprint/background checks can obtain a concealed handgun permit. Numerous studies have concluded that concealed handgun permit holders are five times less likely than non-permit holders to commit violent crimes. Though opponents are quick to suggest that crossfire might make a school shooting worse, such arguments owe more to the movies of John Woo and Michael Bay than to real world data. A 1997 FBI study found that most shootouts last less than ten

seconds. Law enforcement cadets and concealed handgun permit applicants are taught that most self-defense shootings occur within three yards, last less than three seconds, and involve no more than three shots. How could a few seconds of exchanged gunfire at close range possibly lead to greater loss of life than an uncontested execution-style massacre? Opposing arguments that point to alcohol abuse on college campuses have equally little basis in fact. Though approximately one out of every 300 Louisiana residents between the ages of 21 and 30 is licensed to carry a concealed handgun, reports of college-age CHP holders getting drunk and causing problems at off-campus locales are virtually unheard-of.

Allowing concealed carry on college campuses is not a panacea for the national epidemic of campus violence, but it is one of many important steps in the right direction. And unlike other steps toward the same goal, it provides immediate recourse for those who encounter the unthinkable. A professor hiding under his desk listening to gunfire getting closer isn’t helped by a text message warning him of a gunman on campus. A female student assaulted on her long walk home from a night class benefits very little from a well-trained campus police officer a quarter mile away.

In light of the available evidence, all of which suggests that HB 199 won’t make campuses any less safe, what legitimate reason could legislators have for opposing a bill that would take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent?

W. Scott Lewis, a freelance writer from Austin, TX, served as National Media Coordinator for the 30,000-member, non-partisan collegiate organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus during the 2007-2008 school year.

Dear Editor:

On Wednesday, June 4, several Louisiana State Representatives and college officials gathered on the Capitol steps to voice their opposition to House Bill 199, which seeks to allow concealed handgun permit holders to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of Louisiana colleges. In keeping with the precedent set by other opponents of HB 199, the speakers relied on short, emotional sound bites to make their case and made no attempt to support their position with statistics or fact-based evidence.

Ray Lucas, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Chief of Police, stated, "I have to check my weapon when I come to the Capitol, but they want to allow students to carry guns into classrooms." Chief Lucas failed to point out that, unlike Louisiana colleges, the Louisiana Capitol Building is a secured location with metal detectors at every entrance. Until officials figure out a way to secure a 2,000-acre campus and screen 35,000 students and faculty members each day, metal detectors are not a viable option for most universities and large colleges.

Rep. Barbara Norton of Shreveport stated, "It's a bad day in America when we would have to stand here and fight a bill that would have students focus on whether the person next to them is carrying a gun rather on their studies." Whether Rep. Norton realizes it or not, students already have no idea whether or not the person sitting next to them is carrying a gun. Because college campuses are unsecured, open environments, a person can walk into class carrying pretty much anything he or she pleases.

Chief Lucas went on to add that it would be impossible to tell if a person has a permit without stopping everyone. What he failed to add is that it’s also impossible to tell if a person is carrying a concealed handgun without stopping and searching everyone.

Rather than continuing to tout unenforceable, honor-system-based campus gun bans—an approach that has already failed tragically at Virginia Tech, NIU, Louisiana Tech, and LSU—Louisiana colleges should allow the same trained, licensed, carefully screened adults (age twenty-one and above) who lawfully carry concealed handguns without incident in virtually all other unsecured locations throughout Louisiana (office buildings, grocery stores, shopping malls, movie theaters, fast food restaurants, banks, etc.) to do so on college campuses. That approach has succeeded (without a single resulting incident) at 11 other colleges in three other states, for a combined total of 72 semesters. There is no reason to assume it wouldn't work in Louisiana.

W. Scott Lewis Gun Rights Advocate and Author Austin, TX

Miscellaneous Articles, Essays, and Handouts

More Guns on Campus? | Print Article | Newsweek.com http://www.newsweek.com/id/112174/output/print

1 of 3 7/2/2008 1:23 PM

More Guns on Campus?Suzanne SmalleyNEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVEUpdated: 6:06 PM ET Feb 15, 2008

It was a sickeningly familiar scene. A student-gunman opened fire Thursday during a lecture atNorthern Illinois University, killing five and wounding 15 before turning the gun on himself. Thedeadly spree was the fifth school shooting this week—and a traumatic reminder that for all theefforts to improve campus security nationwide since the massacre at Virginia Tech last year,students and faculty remain disturbingly vulnerable.

A nonprofit organization called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus would like to change that. The group, whose 12,000 members nationwide include college students, faculty and parents,champions legislation that would allow licensed gun owners to carry concealed weapons on campus, in the hope that an alert and well-trained citizen could stop a deranged shooter before heor she could do serious damage. According to the National Conference on State Legislatures, 13 states are currently considering some form of "concealed carry" legislation aimed at campuses. Utah is the group's model; after a state Supreme Court ruling found that the state university had violated a law allowing permit holders to carry concealed weapons, the school agreed that guns could legally be carried on its grounds. Some states, like Colorado, do not explicitly ban licensed students and faculty from carrying hidden weapons onto school grounds, though most universities in such states impose restrictions of their own.

There are signs that the "concealed carry" group was making headway even before the tragedy at Northern Illinois. Earlier this month the South Dakota House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to force state universities to allow students to carry weapons on campus, according to GOP state Rep. Tom Brunner. The bill, which Brunner sponsored, recently died in the state senate, but Brunner said he intends to bring it back as soon as he can. "It's not an issue that's going to go away," Brunner said. "We feel pretty passionate [that] students and teachers should have a right to defend themselves, and weapons on campus should be a part of the plan."

But critics say such legislation would not have stopped suspected Northern Illinois shooter Steven P. Kazmierczak from carrying out his violent spree. (The Illinois legislature is considering a bill that would relax the state's concealed-carry restrictions.) Kazmierczak snuck a shotgun and three handguns onto campus in a guitar case and under a coat before walking into a geology lecture and opening fire. Police have recovered 48 bullet casings and six shotgun shells from the crime scene. "It's ridiculous to say someone with a gun could have saved the day," said Brian Malte, the state legislation and politics director at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, "with peoplerunning all over the place and people getting caught in the crossfire." Malte says his group opposes the concealed-carry legislation, because allowing firearms to saturate college campuses,where young people drink heavily and live communally, would only heighten the danger of deadly violence.

W. Scott Lewis is a board member and spokesman for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. Lewis argues that states with the most relaxed concealed-carry laws also happen to be among thesafest. He points to Colorado State University, which has allowed concealed weapons on campus for 10 semesters without incident; the same is true for nine state universities in Utah's system, where concealed weapons have been allowed in university classroom buildings since 2006, Lewis said. NEWSWEEK's Suzanne Smalley spoke to Lewis about the bill, the tragedy at NorthernIllinois University—and his fears that it could happen again. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why do you think it would help matters if students were allowed to carry guns on college campuses?W. Scott Lewis:We're talking about licensed individuals age 21 and above, in most states, who have gone throughextensive background checks, training, testing, etc. Basically, these are the same individuals whoare licensed to carry in virtually all other unsecured locations in these states. By unsecured I meananywhere where there are not metal detectors and X-ray machines. So you're saying that

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individuals who are licensed to carry in office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores,restaurants, shopping malls, churches, banks, etc.—they're currently not allowed to carry oncollege campuses for some reason … College campuses are unsecured locations. Anybody canwalk onto a college campus carrying just about anything they please. So what happens is thesestate laws and these school policies that prohibit concealed carry on college campuses stack theodds in favor of dangerous criminals who have no concern for following the rules.

There are reports that the police arrived within two minutes yesterday. A skilled shooter with a bolt-action hunting rifle or a pump-action shotgun can still fire about oneshot a second. So you're talking about firing off a lot of shots in two minutes before police arrive.So basically it boils down to the simple fact that police and security officers can't be everywhere atonce. It sounds to me like the police had an amazing response time … But they just simply werenot in that classroom when the shooting started, and the only person who really could havemitigated this situation is somebody who was in the classroom when the shooting started.

One of the Virginia Tech victims has come out and said he opposes this idea because ofcollege students being young, drinking heavily … it could open the door to even moreviolence.This is not a debate about keeping guns out of the hands of college students. What we're proposing would not change who is able to obtain a concealed-handgun license. It would not change who is able to buy a firearm. College students over the age of 18 can already buy firearmsin most states. College students over the age of 21 can already obtain concealed handgun licenses in some states. Basically, under our proposal the same trained, licensed individuals who are not getting drunk and shooting people off of college campuses are the same trained and licensed individuals who are not going to be getting drunk and shooting people on college campuses.

How are you bringing this [effort] to the attention of legislators?We're getting our campus leaders and our regional directors and our general members—we havemembers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We also have members in Canada, theU.K. and Israel (they've got a long fight ahead of them). As for U.S. members, we're basically justhaving these students and faculty members and parents and concerned citizens lobby their statelegislators and write letters. We're trying to get out op-ed pieces and information packets and fliersand everything we can to educate people on the facts of this issue. That's really our biggest hurdleright now: ignorance of the issue. There's a lot of statistics out there that show that concealedhandgun license holders are five times less likely than nonlicensed holders to commit violentcrimes. You can look at the 40 right-to-carry states with liberal concealed-carry laws, where theyhave not seen any escalation in gun violence, gun accidents, etc. as a result of allowingconcealed carry. There are currently 11 U.S. universities that have for a combined total of 60semesters allowed concealed carry on campus without an incident. You haven't seen an incidentof gun violence, an incident of gun theft, no gun accidents … Although you can't say in anyparticular situation whether or not concealed carry might have prevented or mitigated a schoolshooting or a sexual assault or anything of that nature, you can say that allowing concealed carrywould even the odds. And that's what this is really about: evening the odds and taking theadvantage away from these dangerous criminals.

There's a famous example in Luby's Cafeteria in Texas. A woman with a concealed-carry permit was unable to stop a gunman from killing her parents and 21 others in 1991 because she had left her gun in her car to avoid breaking the state's law at the time, which banned gun owners from carrying their weapons into public places. She went before the state legislature and she said, "Look, if I'd been allowed to have my gun onme I could have stopped this guy. He had his back to me. He was only a few feet away. I didn'tneed lightning-fast reflexes. I didn't need dead-eye accuracy. I just needed my gun" … She hadbeen carrying the gun for several years for personal protection, and because she was achiropractor she had become worried that because there was no legal provision for concealedcarry in Texas at the time that if she got caught carrying that gun she might lose her chiropracticlicense, so she started leaving it in the car. When this shooting started she reached into her pursefor a gun that wasn't there and basically watched both of her parents be gunned down by thismadman because she was unable to defend herself.

There was the example at the church in Colorado Springs back in December where they actually allowed members, encouraged certain members who had a concealed-handgun license to carry their guns at church. These people were not licensed security guards. They had not been through the state-mandated security guard training or any of that. These were simply people who had concealed-handgun licenses, and the church said, "You know, we'd appreciate it if you would carry your guns at church for the protection of this church." And this woman actually managed to shoot a guy as he was walking through the door armed to the teeth, like Rambo. So concealed carry has mitigated dangerous situations like this in the past.

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On how many campuses do you now have chapters?We have organized chapters on about 100 campuses. The way we define an organized chapter isany campus that has a defined campus leader … We have members on well over 500 campuses.It changes from day to day.

Do you have to be 21 [to get a license to carry a concealed handgun]?In most states you do. Six [states] issue concealed-handgun licenses starting at the age of 18 andthese are all very rural, sparsely populated states. We're talking about Montana and some states like that.

So this might also be about getting that age lowered?We're not seeking to get the age lowered … If you look at the Virginia Tech massacre, 19 of the32 victims were over the age of 21. So we're not trying to change existing concealed-carry laws inany aspect—except removing college campuses from the list of places off limits toconcealed-handgun license holders, in the states where it's prohibited. We also want to see statessay that public, state-funded colleges cannot enact school policies that override state law. Wewant them to basically follow Utah's lead of saying, "Look, you're a state institution. You have tofollow the state laws and allow people to use their state licenses on your property."

Have any of the Virginia Tech family members or survivors joined in the effort?I don't believe we have any of the victims. We definitely have quite a large chapter at VirginiaTech. But we don't have, as far as I know … any of the actual [victims] or their family members[who] have joined us.

Is copycatting turning into a big issue? Does that increase the urgency?That's definitely a factor. People are deciding, "I'm not just going to kill myself. I'm gonna go out in a blaze of glory and make everyone remember me."

If a few of these people who attempted this walked through the door with guns drawn and got shotdown before they could do much damage, I think a lot of them would start to lose interest. Because they'd realize, "Wow, I'm not gonna get famous getting shot in the chest as I draw my gun on a classroom full of potentially armed students." So there's a chance that as far as the famefactor goes that it could be a deterrent.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/112174

© 2008

ConcealedCampus.com

*“Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a non-partisan, grassroots organization aimed at

drawing attention to the fact that holders of concealed handgun licenses/concealed carry weapons permits are forced by state laws and school policies to disarm before entering most college campuses, despite being legally permitted to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else—office buildings, movie theaters, grocery stores, shopping malls, banks, etc. Declaring a college campus a “gun free zone” may make some people feel safer, but as the April 16, 2007, massacre at Virginia Tech and the February 14, 2008, massacre at Northern Illinois University illustrated, feeling safe is not the same as being safe. Denying licensed individuals the means to defend themselves on college campuses turns institutions of higher learning into supermarkets for would-be rapists and mass murderers. Current state laws and school policies prohibit licensed, law-abiding citizens from carrying concealed handguns onto college campuses, while doing nothing to disarm individuals not concerned with following the rules. These laws and policies hand armed madmen, like the Virginia Tech and NIU killers, virtual cornucopias of defenseless victims. In the event of a school shooting, students and faculty are left with no recourse but to hide under their desks, hoping to survive until enough police arrive to formulate a plan and storm the building.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus hopes that increased awareness of the discrepancy between the rules on college campuses and the rules outside of college campuses will motivate citizens to push state legislators and campus administrators to amend existing laws and policies so that concealed handgun license/concealed carry weapons permit holders can legally carry their firearms on college campuses, the same way they currently do at almost all other unsecured (no metal detectors or x-ray machines) locations.

In most states a CHL/CCW applicant must be 21 years of age or older, pass both state and federal (FBI) fingerprint and background checks (often including investigations into records of mental health and sealed/expunged criminal records), attend a state mandated training course, pass both a written and a practical (shooting) test, and have his or her fingerprints and photograph on file with both state authorities and the FBI. Statistically*, concealed handgun license/concealed carry weapons permit holders commit violent crimes at a rate five times lower than non-license holders. CHL/CCW holders are neither criminals nor vigilantes hoping for the chance to shoot a “bad guy;” they are concerned citizens, just like you, who desire the means to extricate themselves from danger, should the unimaginable occur.

SCCC demands to know why individuals who are deemed by state and federal authorities to be competent and trustworthy enough to carry concealed handguns elsewhere are denied this right on college campuses.

For more information on the issue of concealed carry on campus and why it would NOT lead to more violence on college campuses or detract from the educational process, please visit www.ConcealedCampus.com.

ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS

The Facts

- 47 states currently issue Concealed Carry Weapons permits (CCWs) or Concealed Handgun Licenses (CHLs).*Vermont neither offers nor requires a license to carry a handgun (openly or concealed). Illinois and Wisconsin do not have provisions for legal concealed carry.

- Criminals are more afraid of confronting a potential victim with a gun than they are of the police.*U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, "The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons," Research Report (July 1985)

- 3/5 of convicted felons say they would not “mess around” with a person they suspected might have a gun.*U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, "The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons," Research Report (July 1985)

- CCW/CHL holders are statistically LESS violent than the rest of the population. They are arrested for violent crimes at a ratefive times lower than non-license holders (even lower than police officers in many states).

*Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998 *Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September 2000 *FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, 2004 - excludes Hawaii and Rhode Island - small populations and geographic isolation create other determinants to violent crime. *John Lott and David Mustard, “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997) * William E. Sturdevant, “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” September 1, 2000 *"D.C. Police Paying for Hiring Binge," Washington Post, 8/28/94 *Memorandum by James T. Moore, Commissioner of Florida's Department of Law Enforcement, to the Office of the Governor, dated 3/15/95

- Despite the predictions of those who opposed the passage of state Concealed Carry laws, when such laws were first proposed two decades ago, the presence of concealed handguns has not created an epidemic of everyday arguments turning into shootings.

*Colorado State University and all public universities in Utah allow CHL/CCW holders to carry their firearms on campus. Those schools have not had any problems. *"I lobbied against the law in 1993 and 1995 because I thought it would lead to wholesale armed conflict. That hasn't happened. All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn't happen. No bogeyman. I think it's worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I'm a convert." -- Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, 12/23/97 *"I...[felt] that such legislation present[ed] a clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens by placing more handguns on our streets. Boy was I wrong. Our experience in Harris County, and indeed statewide, has proven my fears absolutely groundless." -- Harris County [Texas] District Attorney John Holmes, Dallas Morning News, 12/23/97 *"Some of the public safety concerns which we imagined or anticipated a couple of years ago, to our pleasant surprise, have been unfounded or mitigated." -- Fairfax County VA Police Major Bill Brown, Alexandria Journal, 7/9/97 *"I was wrong. But I'm glad to say I was wrong." -- Arlington County VA Police Detective Paul Larson, The Alexandria Journal, 7/9/97 *"The concerns I had--with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square off against one another with weapons--we haven't experienced that." -- Charlotte-Mecklenburg NC Police Chief Dennis Nowicki, The News and Observer, 11/24/97

- Concealed Carry Laws reduce mass public shootings. *Lott, J., Landes, W.; "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement;" University of Chicago – covers years 1977 to 1995

- Reducing the number of guns does NOT reduce violent crime.*Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser, “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence”

- The United States Supreme Court has ruled that police have NO duty to protect the lives of citizens, yet concealed handgun license holders must leave their greatest means of defenses behind when they step onto college campuses.

*"...law enforcement officers have no affirmative duty to provide such protection..." - South v. Maryland, 1856 *"...there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen." - Bowers v. DeVito, 1982

- Concealed handgun license holders carry for defense of life only. They do not act like the police and actively seek out a shooter.

- Nearly every “shootout” between two armed individuals is over in less than 10 seconds. Mass shootings can exceed 30 minutes.*In The Line of Fire: Violence Against Law Enforcement, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Institute of Justice, 1997 *The real Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a gunfight involving nine armed participants, lasted only about 30 seconds. *Virginia Tech massacre – 9 minutes; Columbine High School massacre – 49 minutes; Luby’s Cafeteria massacre – 15 minutes

- Most victims of mass shootings are shot at pointblank range, by assailants who move slowly and methodically from victim to victim. It requires neither superhuman reflexes nor deadeye accuracy to defend oneself against such an attack.

- Police forces are trained to expect armed “bad guys” and armed “good guys”—be it off-duty/undercover police officers or armedcivilians—in tactical scenarios. CHL holders are state and FBI certified “good guys.”

- There are no significant differences between carrying a concealed handgun on a college campus and carrying a concealed handgun in an office building, shopping mall, restaurant, grocery store, bank, or movie theater (a few of the places CHL/CCW holders are currently permitted to carry concealed handguns).

State Laws Pertaining to Concealed Carry on College Campuses

By W. Scott Lewis

My examination of the laws in the thirty-six states* that are undisputedly “shall-issue”—meaning local authorities cannot require qualified applicants to "show a need" before the applicant is issued a concealed handgun license/concealed carry weapons permit—found that fifteen "shall-issue" states leave the decision of concealed carry on college campuses entirely to each college/university. These states are Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.

Though these states contain a few colleges/universities, such as Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO) and Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA), that allow concealed carry on campus, most prohibit it. Utah is the only state to allow concealed carry at all public colleges/universities, by prohibiting public colleges/universities from creating their own restrictions.

The state laws in the eleven "may-issue" states**--states where local authorities are given discretion over the issuing of concealed handgun licenses/concealed carry weapons permits--typically don't include prohibitions against concealed carry on college campuses because licenses/permits in most of these states are issued so rarely. Of the eleven "may-issue" states, only Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York expressly prohibit, through state law, concealed carry on college campuses.

Of the "may-issue" states, Alabama and Connecticut are considered "discretionary/reasonable issue" states. Though licenses in Alabama and Connecticut are seldom denied, local authorities can and do place their own restrictions on licenses/permits. Iowa is sometimes defined as a “discretionary/reasonable issue” state; though, twenty-one of the ninety-nine counties in Iowa maintain licensing policies that more closely resemble a “right restricted/very limited issue” state. Though Iowa, Alabama, and Connecticut do not have state laws prohibiting concealed carry on college campuses, a prohibition against concealed carry on college campuses can be included as one of the restrictions imposed by the local sheriff's office that issues the license or permit.

The other eight "may-issue" states are considered "right restricted/very limited issue" states. Local sheriffs in these states typically only issue licenses/permits to individuals who can "show a need," such as private investigators, politicians, and persons who have taken out a restraining order against another individual. Though Hawaii is technically a "may-issue" state, concealed handgun licenses/concealed carry weapons permits are never issued by Hawaiian officials, under any circumstances.

Vermont neither offers nor requires a license for a person over the age of 16 to carry a handgun (open or concealed). Vermont state law prohibits possessing a firearm "within a school building or on a school bus" but, like the laws in several other states***, does not specify if the term "school" encompasses institutions of post-secondary education or if it refers only to primary and secondary schools. It should be noted that Vermont has a statewide population of only 608,827 and that it had the third lowest crime rate of all U.S. states in 2006.

Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states with no provision for legal concealed carry. Including Illinois and Wisconsin, there are 27 states that expressly prohibit concealed carry on college campuses. These states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Among the thirty-six ‘shall-issue’ states, six states allow, without special provision, for any person eighteen years or older to be issued a concealed handgun license. These states are Indiana, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Based on the FBI/Department of Justice violent crime statistics for the year 2006, the crime rates for these six states, when ranked with all fifty states and the District of Columbia, rank as follows:

Indiana – 30Montana – 42 South Dakota – 47 New Hampshire – 48 North Dakota – 50 Maine – 51

Not only are Maine, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and South Dakota four of the five U.S. states with the lowest crime rates, Montana has the tenth lowest crime rate, and Indiana isn’t even in the top 50%. Clearly these states’ lenient concealed handgun laws are not breeding generations of young violent offenders.

The extraordinarily low crime rates in these six states, coupled with the fact that these states have a combined population of only about 10,900,000 (approximately 1.6 million less than the combined population of America’s two largest cities—New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA—and at approximately 1/3 the combined violent crime rate of those two cities) has lead Students for Concealed Carry on Campus to focus on the majority of “shall-issue” states, where the minimum age to receive a concealed handgun license is 21 (23 in Missouri).

*Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming

NOTE: Although Alaskan residents can obtain a concealed handgun license/concealed carry weapons permit, for reciprocity with other states, Alaska does not require a license for individuals over the age of 21 to carry a handgun (open or concealed).

**Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island

***For the purposes of this study, the states which ambiguously include "schools" on the list of places where concealed carry is prohibited, without defining the term, are included in the list of 30 states that expressly prohibit concealed carry on college campuses.

Gun Facts Version 5.0 Page 23 Copyright 2008, Guy Smith www.GunFacts.info All Rights Reserved

CONCEALED CARRY LAWS AND WEAPONS

Myth: Concealed carry laws increase crime

Fact: Forty states150, comprising the majority of the American population, are "right-to-carry" states. Statistics show that in these states the crime rate fell (or did not rise) after the right-to-carry law became active (as of July, 2006). Nine states deny or restrict the right to carry.

Fact: Crime rates involving gun owners with carry permits have consistently been about 0.02% of all carry permit holders since Florida’s right-to-carry law started in 1988.151

Fact: After passing their concealed carry law, Florida's homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to 4% below, and remains below the national average (as of the last reporting period, 2005).152

Fact: In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average in the year after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after enactment, and

150At publication time two more states, Kansas and Nebraska, have pass shall-issue legislation, but insufficient data was available to determine how the change has impacted crime rates. 151 Florida Department of Justice, 1998 152Cramer C and Kopel D. Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws. Golden CO: Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994

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500% faster in the second153. Assaults fell 250% faster in the second year.154

Fact: More to the point, crime is significantly higher in states without right-to-carry laws155:

Fact: States that disallow concealed carry have violent crime rates 11% higher than national averages.156

Fact: Deaths and injuries from mass public shootings fall dramatically after right-to-carry concealed handgun laws are enacted. Between 1977 and 1995157,the average death rate from mass shootings plummeted by up to 91% after such laws went into effect, and injuries dropped by over 80%.158

153 Some criminologist believe measuring first year change is shortsighted as it takes more than a year for permits to be issued, reach critical quantities, and for the criminally minded to recognize the new situation and avoid violent confrontations. 154 Bureau of Justice Statistics, online database, reviewing Texas and U.S. violent crime from 1995-2001. 155 John Lott, David Mustard: This study involved county level crime statistics from all 3,054 counties in the U.S., from 1977 through 1992. During this time ten states adopted right-to-carry laws. It is estimated that if all states had adopted right-to-carry laws, in 1992 the US would have avoided 1,400 murders, 4,200 rapes, 12,000 robberies, 60,000 aggravated assaults – and saved over $5,000,000,000 in victim expenses. 156 FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, 2004 - excludes Hawaii and Rhode Island - small populations and geographic isolation create other determinants to violent crime. 157 Federal legislation created a nation “gun-free schools” policy, effective in 1996. Some criminologists maintain this created a new dynamic, encouraging mass murder on campus. Thus after 1995 it is increasing difficult to make comparisons based on the effects of CCWs and mass shootings. 158 “Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement”, John Lott and William Landes, Law School of the University of Chicago, Law & Economics Working Paper No. 73

Type of Crime % Higher in Restrictive States

Robbery 105%Murder 86%Assault 82%Violent Crime 81%Auto theft 60%Rape 25%

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Myth: People with concealed weapons permits will commit

crimes

Fact: The results for the first 30 states that passed “shall-issue” laws for concealed carry permits are similar.

Fact: The general public is:168

5.7 times more likely to be arrested for violent offenses than CCW permit holders. 13.5 times more likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the than CCW permit holders.

Fact: In Texas, the general public is 14 more likely to commit a crime than a CCW permit holder. They are also five times more likely to commit a violent crime.169

Fact: Even gun control organizations agree it is a non-problem, as in Texas – “because there haven't been Wild West shootouts in the streets”.170

Fact: Of 14,000 CCW licensees in Oregon, only 4 (0.03%) were convicted of the criminal (not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm.

159 Reports were as received. No selection or filtering process was used. 160 Violent crime rates are from inception of “shall issue” CCW through 2006, the most recent period available through the Bureau of Justice Statistics online database. 161 October 1987 through Jan 2008 162 1995 – no follow-up data available 163 1994 through 2007 164 1995 through 2004 165 2002 through 2006 166 In 2005 and 2006, Minnesota had an abnormal spike in robbery and aggravated assaults. The first three years of CCW in Minnesota saw violent crime rates being roughly stable. 167 2001 through 2007 168 “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population”, William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999 169 Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000 170 Nina Butts, Texans Against Gun Violence, Dallas Morning News, August 10, 2000

State159 Permitsissued

Revokedpermits

%Revoked

Violent Crime Rate

Change160

Florida 1,327,321161 4,129 0.3% -30.5%Virginia 50,000162 0 0.0% -21.9%Arizona 63,000163 50 0.9% -28.7%North Carolina 59,597164 1,274 1.2% -26.4%Minnesota 46,636165 12 0.03% 16.8%166

Michigan 155,000167 2,178 0.1% 1.4%

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Fact: In Florida, a state that has allowed concealed carry since late 1987, you are twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator as by a person with a concealed carry permit.171

Myth: Texas CCW holders are arrested 66% more often

Fact: Most arrests cited are not any form of violent crime (includes bounced checks or tax delinquency). 172

Fact: The VPC "study" only includes arrests, not convictions.

Fact: Many of these arrests in this premature VPC "study" came in the early years of Texas CCWs when the law was not understood by most of the law enforcement community or prosecutors.

Fact: Compared to the entire population, Texas CCW holders are about 7.6 times less likely to be arrested for a violent crime.173 The numbers breakdown as follows:

214,000 CCW holders174

526 (0.2%) felony arrests of CCW holders that have been adjudicated

100 (0.05%) felony convictions

Fact: A different study concludes that the four year violent crime arrest rate for CCW holders is 128 per 100,000. For the general population, it is 710 per 100,000. In other words, the general public is 5.5 times more likely to commit a violent crime than a CCW licensee.175

171 Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report”, 1998 – Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, December 1998 172 “Basis For Revocation Or Suspension Of Texas Concealed “, Texas Department of Public Safety, December 1, 1998 173 Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association, www.tsra.com/arrests.htm 174 These are year 2000 records. As of 2005, the number of Texas concealed carry permit holders was 248,874. 175 “An Analysis Of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders As Compared To The Arrest Rate Of The Entire Texas Population”, William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999

Texas Crime Rates

-

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

1996 1997 1998 1999

Per

100

,000

pop

ulat

ion

General Population

CCW Licensees

Source: Texas Department of Public Safety (1996

Gun Facts Version 5.0 Page 27 Copyright 2008, Guy Smith www.GunFacts.info All Rights Reserved

Myth: CCWs will lead to mass public shootings

Fact: Multiple victim public shootings drop in states that pass shall-issue CCW legislation.176

Myth: People do

not need

concealable

weapons

Fact: In 80% of gun defenses, the defender used a concealable handgun. A quarter of the gun defenses occurred in places away from the defender's home.177

Fact: 77% of all violent crime occurs in public places.178 This makes concealed carry necessary for almost all self-defense needs. But due to onerous laws forbidding concealed carry, only 26.8% of defensive gun uses occurred away from home.179

Fact: Often, small weapons that are capable of being concealed are the only ones usable by people of small stature or with physical disabilities.

Fact: The average citizen doesn’t need a Sport Utility Vehicle, but driving one is arguably safer than driving other vehicles. Similarly, carrying a concealable gun makes the owner – and his or her community – safer by providing protection not otherwise available.

Myth: Police are against concealed carrying by citizens

Fact: 66% of police chiefs believe that citizens carrying concealed firearms reduce rates of violent crime.180

Fact: “All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn’t happen ...I think it’s worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I’m a convert.”181

176 Lott John R., Landes William M.; "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement"; University of Chicago – covers years 1977 to 1995 177 "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995 178 U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Criminal Victimization in the United States”, 1993 179 Kleck and Gertz, National Self Defense Survey, 1995 180 National Association of Chiefs of Police, 17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs, 2005 181 Glenn White, president, Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997

Murder and Injuries in Multiple Victim Public Shootings

0

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

0.14

0.16

-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Year Before/After CCWs Were Available

Per

100

,000

Pop

ulat

ion

Yea

r th

e la

w to

ok e

ffect

Gun Facts Version 5.0 Page 28 Copyright 2008, Guy Smith www.GunFacts.info All Rights Reserved

Fact: “I ... [felt] that such legislation present[ed] a clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens by placing more handguns on our streets. Boy was I wrong. Our experience in Harris County, and indeed statewide, has proven my fears absolutely groundless”.182

Fact: Explain this to the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, Second Amendment Police Department, and Law Enforcement for the Preservation of the Second Amendment, all of whom support shall-issue concealed carry laws.

182 John B. Holmes, Harris County Texas district attorney, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997

Right-to-Carry 2008 There are 40 Right-to-Carry states. Thirty-six have “shall issue” laws, requiring that carry permits beissued to applicants who meet uniform standards established by the state legislature. Three have fairly-administered discretionary-issue carry permit systems. One, Vermont, respects the right to carry without a permit. Alaska, one of the “shall issue” states, has its permit system for the purpose of permit-reciprocitywith other states, and also adopted a no-permit-required law in 2003.

• There are 10 non-RTC states. Eight have restrictively-administered discretionary-issue systems. Only two—Illinois and Wisconsin—have no permit system and prohibit carrying.

• The newest RTC states: In 2006, Nebraska’s RTC law was signed by Gov. Dave Heineman (R); Kansas’Senate and House overrode Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ (D) veto of an RTC bill by votes of 30-10 and 91-33,respectively; and the Ohio Senate and House overrode then-Gov. Bob Taft’s (R) veto of a bill thatimproves the state’s 2004 RTC law, by votes of 21-12 and 71-21, respectively.

• Other recent RTC initiatives: In January 2006, Wisconsin’s Senate voted 23-10 to override Gov. JimDoyle’s (D) veto of RTC; the Assembly fell two votes short, voting 64-34. In January 2004, Ohio then-Gov. Bob Taft (R) signed RTC into law and New Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld a 2003 RTC law.Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri adopted RTC in 2003, the latter by overriding Gov. Bob Holden’s (D)veto.

• The right to self-defense is a fundamental right. The U.S. constitution, the constitutions of 44 states, common law, and the laws of all 50 states recognize the right to use arms in self-defense. RTC laws respect the right to self-defense by allowing individuals to carry firearms for protection.

• More RTC, less crime: Violent crime rates since 2003 have been lower than anytime since the mid-1970s.1 Since 1991, 23 states have adopted RTC, the number of privately-owned guns has risen by nearly 70 million,2 and violent crime is down 38%. In 2006, the most recent year for which complete data are available, RTC states had lower violent crime rates, on average, compared to the rest of the country (total violent crime by 26%; murder, 31%; robbery, 50%; and aggravated assault, 15%).3

• RTC and crime trends: Studying crime trends in every county in the U.S., John Lott and David Mustard found, “allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have Right to Carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly....[W]hen state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5 and 7 percent.”4

• RTC a success in every state: Former Colorado Asst. Atty. Gen. David Kopel has written, “Whenever a state legislature first considers a concealed carry bill, opponents typically warn of horrible consequences....But within a year of passage, the issue usually drops off the news media’s radar screen, while gun-control advocates in the legislature conclude that the law wasn’t so bad after all.”5 A article on Michigan’s RTC law noted, “Concerns that permit holders would lose their tempers in traffic accidents have been unfounded. Worries about risks to police officers have also proved unfounded....National surveys of police show they support concealed handgun laws by a 3-1 margin....There is also not a single academic study that claims Right to Carry laws have increased state crime rates. The debate among academics has been over how large the benefits have been.”6

• RTC permit-holders are more law-abiding than the rest of the public. For example, Florida, which has issued more carry permits than any state has issued 1.36 million permits, but revoked only 165 (0.01%) due to gun crimes by permit-holders.7

Background: Before 1987, there were 10 RTC states. Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington had “shall issue” permit laws. Alabama and Connecticut had fairly-administered discretionary-issue systems. Georgia’s “shall issue” law was interpreted as discretionary in some jurisdictions. Vermont allowed carrying without a permit. Other states had restrictively-administered discretionary-issue carry permit systems or prohibited carrying.

In 1987, Florida enacted a “shall issue” law that has become the model for other states. Anti-gun groups, politicians and news media people predicted vigilante justice and “Wild West” shootouts on every corner. But through 1992, Florida’s murder rate decreased 23%, while the U.S. rate rose 9%; thereafter, murder decreased both nationally and in Florida.8 Then-Florida Licensing Division Director, John Russi, noted, “Florida’s concealed weapon law has been very successful. All major law enforcement groups supported the original legislation....[S]ome of the opponents of concealed weapon legislation in 1987 now admit the program has not created the problems many predicted.”9 In a 1995 letter to state officials, Dept. of Law Enforcement Commissioner James T. Moore wrote, “From a law enforcement perspective, the licensing process has not resulted in problems.”

• 29 states have adopted RTC since 1987. Of these, 21 previously prohibited carrying and had no carry permit system; nine (indicated with an asterisk, below) had restrictively-administered discretionary-issue systems. 1989: Oregon, Penna. (Phila. included in 1995), and West Virginia (in Georgia a judicial ruling enforced “shall issue” statewide); 1990: Idaho and Mississippi; 1991: Montana; 1994: Alaska, Arizona, Tennessee and Wyoming; 1995: Arkansas, Nevada*, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah* and Virginia*; 1996: Kentucky, Louisiana* and South Carolina*; 2001: Michigan*; 2003: Colorado*; Iowa*

(by fairly administering its discretionary-issue system), New Mexico, Minnesota* and Missouri; 2004: Ohio; 2006: Kansas, Nebraska.

Citizens can defend themselves. Analyzing National Crime Victimization Survey data, criminologist Gary Kleck found, “robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.”10 In the 1990s, Kleck and Marc Gertz found that guns were used for self-protection about 2.5 million times annually.11 The late Marvin E. Wolfgang, self-described as “as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country,” who wanted to “eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police,” said, “The methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. . . . I cannot fault their methodology.”12 A study for the Dept. of Justice found that 34% of felons had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim,” and 40% of felons have not committed crimes, fearing potential victims were armed.13

The right to self-defense has been recognized for centuries. Cicero said 2,000 years ago, “If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right;” English jurist Sir William Blackstone observed that the English Bill of Rights recognized “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense” as intended “to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights,” the first of which is “personal security.”14 Sir Michael Foster, judge of the Court of King’s Bench, wrote in the 18th century, “The right of self-defense. . . is founded in the law of nature, and is not, nor can be, superseded by any law of society.”15

The Supreme Court, in U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), recognized that the right to arms is an individual right, stating that it “is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” In Beard v. U.S. (1895), the court approved the common-law rule that a person “may repel force by force” in self-defense, and concluded that when attacked a person “was entitled to stand his ground and meet any attack made upon him with a deadly weapon, in such a way and with such force” as needed to prevent “great bodily injury or death.” The laws of all states and the constitutions of 44 states recognize the right to armed self-defense. In the Gun Control Act (1968) and Firearms Owners’ Protection Act (1986), Congress stated that it did not intend to “place any undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms appropriate to . . . personal protection, or any other lawful activity.”

Police aren’t required to protect you. In Warren v. District of Columbia (1981), the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled, “official police personnel and the government employing them are not generally liable to victims of criminal acts for failure to provide adequate police protection. . . a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular citizen.” In Bowers v. DeVito (1982), the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, “[T]here is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen.”

National RTC reciprocity: H.R. 226, by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), proposes a federal law, that any person with a valid state-issued carry permit may carry in any other state, as follows: In a state that issues carry permits, its laws would apply. In states that don’t issue permits, a federal standard would permit carrying in places other than police stations; courthouses; public polling places; meetings of state, county, or municipal governing bodies; schools; passenger areas of airports; etc.

Nonsense from Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.): Sarah Brady: “the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes;” former HCI Chair, the late Pete Shields: “put up no defense - give them what they want;” Brady Center’s Dennis Henigan: self-defense is “not a federally guaranteed constitutional right.”16 In Jan. 1999, HCI claimed that between 1992-1997 violent crime declined less in RTC states than in other states.17 (HCI previously claimed RTC caused crime to rise.) HCI erred in categorizing 31 states as having RTC during the period, since only 17 of the 31 had RTC in 1992. HCI calculated crime trends from 1992 to under-represent the impact of RTC laws; by 1992 many states had RTC for many years and already experienced decreases in crime. HCI misclassified Alabama and Connecticut as “restrictive” states, doing so because crime had decreased in both. HCI credited restrictive

laws for crime decreasing in some states, but states that have restrictive carry laws have had them for manyyears, and crime did not begin declining in those states until the 1990s, and did so due to factors unrelatedto guns.

Nonsense from Violence Policy Center: In 1995, VPC claimed Florida’s RTC law “puts guns into thehands of criminals.”18 The claim was false, since the law permits a person to carry, not acquire, a firearm.VPC claimed “criminals do apply for concealed carry licenses,” without noting that such applications arerejected. Contradicting itself, VPC noted that criminals had requested that their rejected applications bereconsidered. “To set the record straight,” Florida Secy. of State, Sandra B. Mortham, said, “As ofNovember 30, 1995, the Department had denied 723 applications due to criminal history. The fact thatthese 723 individuals did not receive a license clearly indicates that the process is working.” She added,“the majority of concealed weapon or firearm licensees are honest, law-abiding citizens exercising theirright to be armed for the purpose of lawful self-defense.”19 In 2001, VPC claimed there are more womenmurdered with handguns than criminals killed by in self-defense.20 The value of handguns for self-defenseis not measured by how many criminals are killed, however. More important is how often people usehandguns to prevent crimes and how often criminals do not attack for fear the potential victim is armed.Also, VPC undercounted the number of criminals killed in self-defense by counting only those noted inpolice reports, thus excluding defensive homicides later determined to have been appropriate.

McDowell math: In March 1995, anti-gun researcher David McDowell claimed that gun homicide ratesincreased in Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa after Florida’s 1987 RTC law.21 But homicide rates fell 10%, 18% and 20%, respectively, in those metro areas from 1987 until 1993, the most recent data at the time.22

To show an increase, McDowell calculated Jacksonville and Tampa trends from the early 1970s, whenrates were lower than in 1993, but calculated Miami’s from 1983, since rates before 1983 were higher andtheir inclusion would show that the rate had decreased. None of McDowell’s homicides was committed bya carry permit holder, and he did not indicate which homicides had occurred in situations where a permitwould have been required to carry a gun. McDowell has also claimed that D.C.’s murder rate decreasedafter its 1977 handgun ban. In fact, the rate tripled after the ban.23

The 43:1 claim: Based upon a small study of King’s County (Seattle), Washington, gun control supportersclaim a gun in the home is “43 times more likely” to be used to kill a family member than a criminal.24 To reach that ratio, self-defense firearms uses are grossly undercounted by counting only cases in whichcriminals were killed. Most often, when guns are used to defend against criminals, the criminals are onlyscared off, captured or wounded. Kleck has called the 43:1 ratio and its variants “the most nonsensicalstatistic in the gun control debate.”25

1. BJS (http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/) and FBI (www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offenses/violent_crime/index.html).

2. BATF, “Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002” (http://www.atf.gov/pub/index.htm - Firearms).

3. Note 1, FBI.

4. Lott, “Crime, Deterrence, and Right To Carry Concealed Handguns,” 1996.

5. David Kopel, “The Untold Triumph of Concealed-Carry Permits,” Policy Review, July-Aug. 1996, p. 9.

6. “Should Michigan keep new concealed weapon law? Don’t believe gun foe scare tactics,” Detroit News, 1/14/01.

7. Florida Division of Licensing, Monthly Statistical Report (http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html).

8. Note 1, BJS.

9. Testimony before the Michigan House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, 12/5/95

10. Targeting Guns, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, p. 171.

11. “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall 1995, pp. 150-187.

12. “A Tribute to a View That I Have Opposed,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall 1995, pp. 188-192.

13. J. Wright and P. Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, 1986, p. 155.

14. Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed, The Independent Institute, 1994, pp. 17, 54.

15. Dowlut, Knoop, “State Constitutions and The Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” Okla. City Univ. Law Review, 1982, p. 183.

16. Brady: Tom Jackson, “Keeping the battle alive,” Tampa Tribune, 10/21/93; Shields, Guns Don’t Die - People Do, N.Y.: Arbor House, 1981; Henigan: USA Today, 11/20/91.

17. Handgun Control, Inc., “Concealed Truth.” (www.bradycampaign.org/facts/research/?page=conctruth&menu=gvr).

18. “Concealed Carry: The Criminal’s Companion.”

19. St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/96.

20. “A Deadly Myth: Women, Handguns, and Self-Defense.”

21. “Easing Concealed Firearm Laws: Effects on Homicide in Three States.”

22. Note 1, BJS, and FBI, annual Crime in the United States reports.

23. Ibid.

24. A. L. Kellermann, “Protection or Peril?: An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home,” New England Journal of Medicine, 1986.

25. Note 11, pp. 177-178.

Copyright 2008, National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action. This may be reproduced. It may not be reproduced for commercial purposes.

The Brady Campaign’s “No Gun Left Behind”

By SCCC

In 2007 the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence put out a report titled "No Gun Left Behind: The Gun Lobby's Campaign to Push Guns into Colleges and Schools." In keeping with the Brady Campaign’s usual refusal to acknowledge that average Americans genuinely desire the means to defend themselves, the report paints the push for concealed carry on college campuses as some sort of grand conspiracy by a malevolent, all-powerful gun lobby. The essay makes the typical, unsubstantiated, hypothetical arguments against concealed carry on college campuses. It talks about drug and alcohol use on college campuses, ignoring the fact that drugs and alcohol are less prevalent on college campuses than at off-campus apartments and parties; yet, newspapers aren’t filled with stories about CHL/CCW holders shooting people at off-campus apartments or parties. It talks about suicide and mental health issues, ignoring the fact that the Japanese suicide rate is more than double the U.S. suicide rate, despite Japan's virtual prohibition on the civilian ownership of firearms. This fact alone suggests that access to firearms is not the determining factor in whether or not a person will kill himself or herself. The report talks about gun theft and accidental shootings, despite the fact that none of the eleven U.S. colleges that currently allow concealed carry on campus have seen any resulting accidental shootings or gun thefts (or suicides or drug/alcohol related problems). The study completely ignores the successful history of concealed handgun licensing laws in the U.S.

The essay concludes by claiming, "a climate of learning and free discussion and debate is not fostered when some of the people in classrooms have guns." Concealed carry hasn't prevented "free discussion and debate" in the Virginia state legislature, where it's allowed. It doesn't make people afraid to speak up in the offices of Texas government agencies, where it's allowed. And it hasn't prevented learning at the eleven U.S. colleges where it is currently allowed. Suggesting that the presence of legally concealed handguns will make people too frightened to function is completely ridiculous. How many people in the 40 “right-to-carry” states are afraid to watch a movie in a crowded 300-seat theater because, statistically speaking, three people in that theater are legally carrying concealed handguns? How many people in right-to-carry states are afraid to go to a mall because, statistically speaking, one shopper out of 100 is legally carrying a concealed handgun? Like most of the Brady Campaign's arguments, this one is baseless nonsense.

The first appendix of the Brady Campaign's essay is titled "Assorted Crimes and Misdeeds by CCW Licensees." The appendix contains 29 examples of why the Brady Campaign doesn't believe that concealed carry should be allowed ANYWHERE. Howard Nemerov researched two of the more dubious-sounding incidents and found that they were actually ruled to be justifiable self-defense shootings.He also found that the Brady Campaign’s report completely mischaracterizes the facts of both incidents. Of the remaining 27 incidents, seven are incidents in which a concealed handgun license (CHL)/concealed carry weapons permit (CCW) holder carried his or her concealed handgun into a place where concealed carry is prohibited by law, such as an

airport or school parking lot. It can be assumed that many of these incidents (particularly the airport incidents) were accidental and posed no threat to anyone. Of the remaining twenty incidents, one involves a man who left his handgun in a bag of supplies taken to school by his son (no shots were fired, and nobody was injured), one involves a man whose CHL/CCW was seized for carrying a handgun while under the influence of alcohol, and one involves a man who threatened to commit suicide. Of the remaining 18 cases, one involves a threat made by an OFF-DUTY POLICE OFFICER, and AT LEAST one involves criminal activity by a person whose CHL/CCW was revoked years before. Of the sixteen cases which APPEAR to actually involve CHL/CCW holders who either committed violent crimes or endangered the public, two are accidental discharges (only one resulted in an injury; neither resulted in a fatality), two are incidents in which children found unsecured guns and accidentally shot themselves, and one is an incident in which a CHL/CCW holder accidentally shot and injured a bystander, while using his weapon in self-defense. In the Brady Campaign’s desperation to include a school shooting in the list, the report goes so far as to include an incident in which a student who shot and killed three professors at the University of Arizona School of Nursing reportedly told a classmate, about a year prior to the shooting, that he had obtained a CHL/CCW permit. There is no confirmation from the gunman’s close friends or family or from any government agency that he actually possessed a CHL/CCW, but apparently, unsubstantiated hearsay evidence is sufficient for the Brady Campaign's purposes.

When debating SCCC Media Coordinator W. Scott Lewis, on Fox News, Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke claimed, "There are stories every day where someone with a concealed carry permit is doing a shooting." If that is true, why wasn’t the Brady Campaign able to compile a more impressive list of assorted crimes and misdeeds by CCW licensees? SCCC does not deny that crimes are occasionally committed by concealed handgun license holders. Every segment of society has its bad apples. In 2007 a police officer in Wisconsin walked into a party and opened fire. Does that mean police officers shouldn't be allowed to carry guns? No, of course not. The fact of the matter is that concealed handgun license holders commit crimes at a VERY low rate--a rate lower than police officers in some states. Concealed carry is not leading to problems in the other places where it is allowed, and it will not lead to problems on college campuses.

Gun Control: Brady Anti-CCW Campaign Continues

By Howard Nemerov (Nov 12, 07)

The Brady report is riddled with inaccuracies…

In May of 2007, the Brady Campaign published a report entitled “No Gun Left Behind: The Gun Lobby’s Campaign to Push Guns Into Colleges and Schools.” While there are a number of points to be explored in this report, the topic here is their allegation that getting a concealed carry license is too easy and therefore a threat to public safety:

“Over the last decade, the gun lobby has pushed hard in all 50 states to permit the carrying of concealed weapons by nearly everyone except convicted felons. These “shall-issue” carrying concealed weapons (CCW) laws require state authorities to issue CCW licenses to virtually anyone who applies, regardless of whether the applicant can demonstrate a need to carry a gun. As a result, millions of Americans are now licensed to carry concealed handguns in public.”

To bolster their claims, Brady’s report contains an appendix of stories where alleged CCW licensees broke the law. Of the two cases researched so far, both of these incidents have proven to be self-defense, while Brady insinuates both cases were murder. The first is fairly straightforward:

“Fort Lauderdale, Florida, January 1, 2006. Rogelio Monero [sic], 49, allegedly shot and killed Victor Manuel Villanueva, 17, during a New Year’s altercation as Moreno tried to stop a fight between Villanueva and a third party. Moreno was charged with manslaughter.”

A Fort Lauderdale Police Department press release corroborated the basic facts of the case, and also contained contact information within the department. A phone call to their Media Relations officer resulted in her statement that the case was ruled a “justifiable shooting.”

The second case is far more interesting. Brady writes:

“Vancouver, WA, October 3, 2006. Jon W. Loveless, unemployed for ten years, daily marijuana smoker, and father of two children – said that he shot “until my gun was empty” at Kenneth Eichorn [sic], because Eichorn [sic] had “a weird look” on his face. Loveless also claimed that Eichorn [sic] held a handgun, but the Eichorn [sic] family disputes the claim. Loveless was charged with one count of second-degree murder.”

The above reference was from an article allegedly published on October 3, 2006 by the Vancouver Columbian and entitled “Documents: Suspect Fired Gun ‘Until Empty’”. Searching the Columbian archives yielded five articles, none of which were dated October 3, 2006*.

One Columbian article places the “weird look” in context:

“Loveless told detectives from the Vancouver Police Department that he only shot Eichhorn after Eichhorn refused to drop his handgun and got a “weird look,” according to court documents. There were no other witnesses.”

A day later, another Columbian article noted:

“Loveless told detectives he thought it was going to be a friendly meeting to discuss a piece of radio equipment, but when he pulled his truck alongside Eichhorn’s truck he said Eichhorn had a gun pointed at him.

Loveless, who has a concealed weapons permit, said he retrieved his gun from his glove compartment and pointed it at Eichhorn.

“Loveless claims that he directed Eichhorn to drop the weapon but that Eichhorn “got a weird look” on his face,” Detective Jon Thompson wrote. “Believing that Eichhorn was about to fire his handgun, Loveless instead fired his handgun several times.”

Brady’s other inaccuracies include:

No mention of Loveless’s employment status or drug usage.

No archived Columbian article entitled “Suspect fired gun ‘until empty’”.

No quotes from Eichhorn’s family.

No evidence that Loveless shot his gun “until empty”, although the police report says he shot “several times”.

Research found no further articles for “Jon W. Loveless” or “Jon Loveless” or “Kenneth Eichhorn”, even in 2007. Nor was there any search results for “suspect fired gun”, which is part of the title of the article referenced by Brady and attributed to Columbian.

Brady begins with bombast and concludes with inept research in a futile effort to prove that concealed carry licensees are all criminals. Using hearsay to imply guilt and redacting vital details reveals Brady’s bias against self-defense and firearms ownership, but most disturbing is their bias against the truth.

Howard Nemerov is a columnist for Texas State Rifle Association’s TSRA Sportsman and “unofficial” investigative analyst for NRA News. He can be reached at Hnemerov[at]netvista[dot]net

*The Vancouver Columbian online archives now include the article in question.

Debunk the Brady Campaign at http://debunkthebradycampaign.blogspot.com.

Lies, damn lies, and VPC statistics July 21, 9:06 AM · John Pierce - Minneapolis Gun Rights Examiner

"Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything." - Gregg Easterbrook

I have always felt that the Violence Policy Center (VPC) was very aptly named. After all, they do advocate for public policypositions that would certainly result in violence against law abiding citizens if implemented.

Thankfully, their increasingly shrill cries for American citizens to abandon freedom for the nurturing bosom of a totalitarianregime have been generally ignored by one and all.

However, I must give them credit for dogged determination in the face of overwhelming reality. You have to remember that, when they were formed in 1988, there were 15 states where obtaining a concealed carry permit was legally impossible and 25“may-issue” states where obtaining a permit was uncertain at best.

But now, after 21 years of diligent hand-wringing by the VPC and their ilk, there are only 2 states remaining which do notallow concealed carry and 39 states have passed “shall-issue” laws which require that all citizens who meet the statutory requirements be issued a permit without the nepotism, elitism and cronyism that are the hallmarks of the “may-issue”process.

Talk about a stark image of failure …

But the VPC soldiers on, not allowing two decades of abysmal, abject failure to discourage them from their insidious mission. Their latest attack on the fundamental right of self-defense comes as Senators Thune and Vitter have introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1390) which would allow an individual who has met the requirements for a carry permit in his home state, or who is otherwise allowed by his home state's law to carry a firearm, to carry a firearm for protection in any other state that issues such permits so long as the laws of the state in which the firearm is carried are observed.

As states such as Maryland, New York, and New Jersey panic over the idea of losing the ability to provide disarmed herds of victims for their criminals, the VPC has sprung to the rescue like a well paid mob lawyer and has released the results of a poorly concocted “study” claiming to illustrate the evils of concealed carry permits.

I use the word “study” loosely in order to not offend the sensibilities of any true statistician who might be reading this article. Their methodology appears to have been to assign a slightly inebriated intern to do a Google news search for “permit holder”and “charged with”.

These results were apparently then pasted into notepad and ultimately compiled into a state by state list by the VPC’s crack technical staff. The resulting PDF file (the creation of which I imagine was a matter of some pride) was dubbed Law Enforcement and Private Citizens Killed by Concealed Handgun Permit Holders: An Analysis of News Reports, May 2007 to April 2009.

On a more serious note

The “study” purports to show that during the strangely arbitrary period from May 2007 until April 2009, permit holders were responsible for the deaths of 7 police officers and 44 citizens.

Now … the loss of a single innocent life is a tragedy that cannot be taken too seriously. And as an ardent supporter of our nation’s law enforcement officers, who are overwhelmingly our brothers and sisters in our struggle to protect and enhance our rights as gun owners, I mourn the loss of these 7 brave officers deeply.

But does this “study” hold water as it attempts to capitalize on these deaths politically? Ted Deeds, Chief Operating Officer of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA) doesn’t think so.

“I've only just started looking at it and, no surprise, I think there will be lots of holes in it. As always, one cop injured orkilled, one good guy injured or killed is too many. But I suspect that there are A LOT more significant mechanisms of injury/death than what this so-called 'report' hopes to conclude.”

Let’s examine the many, many flaws that render their data virtually meaningless and reduces their “study” to nothing more than the ideological propaganda that is the normal grist of the VPC mill.

Flaw #1: How did they identify permit holders?

The report makes it clear that they have no idea whether or not they are accurately identifying these parties as permit holders.In the study, they admit as much, “Because of the secretive nature of concealed handgun permit laws, the VPC relied primarily on news accounts.”

Wait … what? The very premise upon which the “study” is based is the fact that these shooters are permit holders. And this key, threshold issue was determined by relying upon news reports? I cannot remember the last time that I read a news report involving a firearm that did not contain a serious mistake of fact that was glaringly evident to anyone with even a modicum of firearms knowledge.

But wait … surely this lack of verifiable facts can be remedied. After all, the presence or absence of a carry permit would be entered into evidence in the trial and thus available to the VPC for verification.

Except … this leads us to flaw #2.

Flaw #2: Charged with a crime does not equal conviction

Many of the alleged permit holders noted in this report are described as having been charged with a crime but no further information is provided as to the disposition of the charge. This is an important and glaring attempt to cloud the issue.

In many states and jurisdictions, a citizen who properly and legally defends themselves from an attack may well expect to be initially charged with a crime. The charges may later be dropped or may be no-true-billed at the grand jury level. A charge does NOT equal a conviction and yet the VPC, an organization that promotes itself as a public policy think-tank on legal and constitutional issues, treats them as synonymous.

It should come as no surprise that the VPC does not support the concepts of “due process” or “innocent until proven guilty” any more than they do the right to defend one’s self or one’s family.

Perhaps I could suggest a new VPC motto. “Individual rights are like potato chips, you can’t destroy just one!”

Flaw #3: Does my permit allow me to carry a strangling cord?

Another blatant attempt to pad the data was brought to my attention by Mr. Deeds. It comes in the form of several data points involving non-handgun related killings by “permit holders” (see Flaw #1).

Carry permits allow a person to carry a handgun for personal protection. In cases where rifles or other weapons are used to commit a crime, the fact that the person may or may not have been a permit holder is a moot point and not germane to the issue at hand.

Flaw #4: Who is more dangerous?

The VPC concludes their report by stating that these examples illustrate clearly that concealed carry laws are not good public policy because permit holders are dangerous. Furthermore, there is a clear implication that they are more dangerous than the general public.

Let’s take a closer look at the statistics to refute this wild inaccuracy. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, across thegeneral public in the United States, there are an average of .042802 murders per 1,000 citizens per year.

Now … even if we concede all 51 deaths detailed in the VPC report as wrongful deaths, averaging them across the over 6 MILLION permit holders in the United States and taking into account the two year timeframe, we get an average of .00425 per 1,000 per year.

In other words, even if they are 100% correct in their wildly flawed report, they have simply proven that permit holders commit murders at a rate that is 1/10th of the general public.

The VPC report also makes much of the fact that 7 of the victims in these news reports were police officers. They go out of their way to imply that as concealed carry has swept across the nation, law enforcement deaths have risen alarmingly. The only problem with this? It, like so much else that comes from the VPC, is blatantly untrue.

In a report released last week, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund released data that soundly refutes this claim. Chairman of the Memorial Fund, Craig Floyd said it best, "There are three-times more officers on our streets than in the 1970s, and we have half the number of fatalities."

As a matter of fact, since this is supposed to be a debate over statistics, let’s map the killing of officers with firearms againstthe rise in shall issue states. The data for officer deaths comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (See VPC … that is what we call citing to actual authority).

Wow … it sure seems to me that the rise in shall-issue has been accompanied by a sharp decline in officer deaths by firearms.How could the VPC have missed such a key point? Perhaps the intern had to leave early to make it to his second job?

In closing I should say that I have had great fun at the expense of the VPC while writing this article but what they hope toaccomplish is no laughing matter. They are working diligently day and night to restrict and ultimately eliminate the veryrights that made America the great nation that it is.

Make no mistake about it. If you and I and every other law-abiding gun owner do not make our voices heard, they will takeback every inch of progress we have made and keep going until the days of armed citizens will be only a dim memory.

SCCC Press Releases (October 2007 �– August 2008)

SCCC – Press Release – National Empty Holster Protest

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus media@concealedcampus.org http://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS (CONCEALEDCAMPUS.COM) ANNOUNCES NATIONAL COLLEGIATE EMPTY HOLSTER PROTEST

During the week of October 22-26, 2007, college students throughout America, organized under the banner of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, will attend classes wearing empty holsters, in protest of state laws and campus policies that stack the odds in favor of armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else.

In 39 U.S. states, thousands of collegiate students and faculty—age 21 and above—are licensed to carry concealed handguns throughout their day-to-day lives. And they do so without incident. However, despite the absence of any compelling evidence that these licensed individuals would pose any more threat to college campuses than they currently do to office buildings, shopping malls, movie theaters, grocery stores, banks, etc., they are prohibited, either by state law or school policy, from carrying their firearms onto most college campuses.

On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims—He wasn’t concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech’s status as a “gun free zone,” this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire.

In the last twenty years, the vast majority of the mass shootings in America—from the Texas Luby’s massacre to the Columbine High School massacre—have happened in “gun free zones.” Labeling an area “gun free” may make some people feel safer, but as the shootings at Virginia Tech taught us, feeling safe and being safe are not the same thing.

For over a year, state law in Utah has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. This has yet to result in a single act of violence. Numerous studies* by independent researchers and state agencies show that license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to be arrested for violent crimes. Clearly, license holderspose little threat to college campuses.

There is a wide discrepancy between the intent of campus gun bans and the actual consequences of such bans. It is this discrepancy to which the students of SCCC hope their Empty Holster Protest will draw attention. While opponents may argue that guns have no place in institutions of higher learning, SCCC contends that it is the threat of uncontested, execution-style massacre that has no place in America’s colleges. The students of the Empty Holster Protest respectfully ask that steps be taken to take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent.

For more information contact Scott Lewis at media@concealedcampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.com.

*“Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of college students, parents, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun licenses should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. We are not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:Students for Concealed Carry on Campus W. Scott Lewis – Media Coordinator media@concealedcampus.org http://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS (SCCC) ENDORSES GEORGIA HB 915, THE “SECOND AMENDMENT PROTECTION ACT OF 2008”

After careful deliberation Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) has decided to fully endorse Georgia House Bill 915, also known as the “Second Amendment Protection Act of 2008,” sponsored by state representative Timothy Bearden of Georgia’s 68th district. This bill, pre-filed by Representative Bearden on December 26, 2007, will be introduced to the people of the great state of Georgia at 10 AM on Thursday, January 10, 2008, at a gun rights rally on the steps of the Georgia state capitol building.

Among the many logical provisions of this bill, it will remove technical schools, vocational schools, colleges, universities, and institutions of postsecondary education from the list of places where concealed handgun license (CHL)/concealed carry weapons permit (CCW)/concealed handgun permit (CHP) holders are prohibited from carrying concealed handguns, in the state of Georgia.

On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims—He wasn’t concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech’s status as a “gun free zone,” this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire.

Over the last quarter-century, the vast majority of the mass shootings in America—from the recent shooting at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, to the 1984 San Ysidro McDonald's massacre—have occurred in “gun free zones.” Though labeling an area “gun free” may make some people feel safer, feeling safe is clearly not the same as being safe.

If HB 915 becomes law, Georgia’s thirty-seven state colleges (along with Georgia’s thirty-six state trade schools) will join Utah’s nine state colleges, Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO), and Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA) in allowing the same individuals licensed to carry concealed handguns in virtually all other unsecured locations—locations without metal detectors and X-ray machines—to do so on campus.

Because studies by numerous independent researchers and state agencies have found that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes; because no other type of location—from office buildings to churches to movie theaters to shopping malls—has seen an increased rate of violent crime since concealed carry became legal there; because the eleven universities that currently allow concealed carry on campus (and have done so for a combined total of over sixty semesters) have not seen any resulting incidents of gun violence, gun accidents, or gun thefts; because police and security officers cannot be everywhere at once; and because “gun free zones” recklessly stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals, SCCC feels that this proposed change to Georgia state law is both prudent and supported by the relevant facts.

For more information contact W. Scott Lewis at media@concealedcampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.org.

HB 915 can be read here: http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/search/hb915.htm

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of approximately 10,000 college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun licenses should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. We are not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

SCCC – Press Release – Response to the Brady CampaignFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:SCCC Media Team Students for Concealed Carry on CampusMediaTeam@ConcealedCampus.orghttp://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS RESPONDS TO THE BRADY CAMPAIGN’S CONSPIRACYACCUSATIONS: “PROVE IT.”

Four months after Peter Hamm, spokesperson for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, verbally attacked the college-based, grassroots organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, telling a Fox News reporter, "You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school," he is stepping up the rhetoric. Not contentwith encouraging college students to forgo their educations rather than fight for a cause in which they believe, Mr. Hamm hasresorted to baseless conspiracy theories and slander.

In a February 19, 2008, interview with Anna Hipsley of Australia’s ABC News radio, Mr. Hamm made the following statementabout SCCC:

“We know very clearly that they were organized and they are funded by the gun industry, by the companies that are selling the guns. This is not some spontaneous, grassroots organization."

Scott Lewis, media coordinator for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, responded, “In a way I kind of envy the BradyCampaign. It must be so much easier to run an advocacy group when you don’t feel obligated to substantiate anything yousay.” Mr. Lewis went on to categorically deny that either the gun industry or the gun lobby have played any part in the organizing or financing of SCCC:

“A few small gun shops have donated holsters for students to use in our Empty Holster Protests, and the Front Sight FirearmsTraining Institute, located in Nevada, sent us three gift certificates that we’re going to auction to raise money. And after SCCCstarted making national news, a couple of months ago, the NRA sent me a hat and a T-shirt. But other than that, we’ve never received anything from the gun industry or the gun lobby. So far, our entire operating budget has come out of the pockets of our members—mostly poor college students who strongly believe in this cause. About a month ago we opened a bankaccount and started accepting donations, to help raise the money we need to incorporate. So far we’ve raised a combinedtotal of $610.02, from online donations and T-shirt sales.”

In response to the allegations made by the Brady Campaign, SCCC’s response is simple—“Prove it.” In the name of full disclosure, SCCC is willing to make all of its financial records available to the media if the Brady Campaign will do the same.Explained Lewis, “After building SCCC on a foundation of our own sweat equity and financial sacrifices, our members are incensed that the Brady Campaign is accusing us of being well paid pawns.”

Though the Brady Campaign likes to attribute all efforts to maintain and/or restore gun rights in America to an all-powerful gunindustry that uses coercion and manipulation to subvert the true wishes of the American people, the real American gun industryhas an annual revenue of only about $2 billion, leaving it inadequately funded for the job of manipulating the Americangovernment or the American people. At the true heart of the fight for gun rights in America are everyday people, like the members and organizers of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus—people who believe they have the inalienable right to defend themselves and who trust their fellow citizens enough to guarantee them that same right.

Despite the Brady Campaign’s baseless accusations and constant barrage of insults—such as Paul Helmke’s statement on Fox News, on October 26, 2007, that SCCC members are students who “like to dress up” to “feel more masculine”—they are unable to go toe-to-toe with SCCC on the facts. And because the organizers of SCCC are confident that facts will win out over rhetoric every time, the national officers for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus wish to extend the board of directors of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence an open invitation to debate the issue of concealed carry on college campuses,on the campus of any University in the United States of America.

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, andconcerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun licenses should enjoy the same rights on college campusesthat current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and schooladministrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. We are not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization. As of the February 20, 2008, issuance of this press release, SCCC had over 16,000 members. As of May 1, 2008, SCCC had over 30,000 members.

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SCCC – Press Release – Second National Empty Holster Protest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:SCCC Media TeamStudents for Concealed Carry on CampusMediaTeam@ConcealedCampus.orghttp://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS (CONCEALEDCAMPUS.COM) ANNOUNCES SECONDNATIONAL COLLEGIATE EMPTY HOLSTER PROTEST

During the week of April 21-25, 2008, thousands of college students throughout the United States, organized under the banner ofStudents for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC), will attend classes wearing empty holsters, in protest of state laws and schoolpolicies that stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals and armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens licensed to carryconcealed handguns virtually everywhere else.

SCCC hosted its first national collegiate Empty Holster Protest during the week of October 22-26, 2007, on the campuses of approximately 125 U.S. colleges and universities. This second Empty Holster Protest will expand upon the concept of the first protest,by placing greater emphasis on educating the uninformed. Protesters will focus on sharing the facts of “concealed carry” withstudents and faculty who may not be aware that concealed carry laws exist or that those laws differ on college campuses from mostother locations.

In 39 U.S. states, thousands of college students and faculty—age 21 and above—are licensed to carry concealed handguns throughouttheir day-to-day lives. And they do so without incident. Numerous studies* by independent researchers and state agencies show thatconcealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to be arrested for violent crimes. However,despite the absence of any compelling evidence that these licensed individuals would pose any more threat to college campuses thanthey currently do to office buildings, movie theaters, shopping malls, grocery stores, restaurants, churches, banks, etc., they areprohibited, either by state law or school policy, from carrying their firearms onto most college campuses.

Colorado State University, Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, VA), and all nine public colleges in the state of Utahcurrently allow concealed carry on campus. After a combined total of more than sixty semesters of allowing concealed carry oncampus, none of these schools have seen any resulting incidents of gun violence, gun accidents, or gun theft.

From assault to rape to mass shootings, college campuses are touched by every type of violent crime imaginable. Labeling an area“gun free” may make some people feel safer, but as the shootings at Virginia Tech and NIU taught us, feeling safe is not the same asbeing safe. There is a wide discrepancy between the intent of campus gun bans and the actual consequences of such bans. It is thisdiscrepancy to which the student members of SCCC hope their Empty Holster Protest will draw attention. While opponents mayargue that guns have no place in institutions of higher learning, SCCC contends that it is the rapes, the assaults, and the uncontested,execution-style massacres that have no place in America’s colleges. The students of the Empty Holster Protest respectfully ask thatsteps be taken to take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus we will neither host nor endorse any protests during the week of April 13-19. April 16 is to be a day of remembrance for the students, faculty, and families affected by the Virginia Tech shooting. SCCC wishes to avoid anyaction that might distract or detract from the memory of the individuals lost on April 16, 2007.

For more information, contact the SCCC Media Team at MediaTeam@ConcealedCampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.com.

*“Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant,September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; TexasDepartment of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000,compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of over 25,000 college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, andconcerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun licenses should enjoy the same rights on college campuses thatcurrent laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators toapprove laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealedhandguns on college campuses. We are not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

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Page 1 of 2 SCCC – PRESS RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT: Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Katie Kasprzak – Director of Public Relations katie.kasprzak@concealedcampus.org http://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS (SCCC) ENDORSES LOUISIANA HB 199

The national college-based organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) announced today that Louisiana House Bill 199 has the organization’s full support. SCCC also denounced the misleading theatrics, outrageous statements, and manipulative tactics utilized by some of the bill’s opponents. If passed, HB 199 would authorize concealed handgun permit holders—the same trained, licensed adults (age twenty-one and above) currently authorized to carry concealed handguns in most other unsecured locations throughout the state of Louisiana—to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of Louisiana colleges.

One of the most vocal opponents of this bill, authored by Louisiana State Representative and former Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Ernest Wooton, is former gang leader and current Stop the Killing, Inc., president Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed. Mr. Reed, apparently unclear on the difference between middle school and college, protested HB 199 on Monday, May 12, by filling the House chamber with early- and pre-teenchildren wearing “Stop the killing” and “Keep guns off our campuses” T-shirts. Apparently sharing Mr. Reed’s confusion, RepresentativeBarbra Norton of Shreveport proclaimed, “Let's kill the bill. Let's not kill the children.”

Though Rep. Norton’s talk of killing children and Mr. Reed’s befuddling statement that the state, “should not allow anyone to sit back and socially engineer killing,” conjure up shocking images, their arguments hit a brick wall when faced with the facts. Every college campus in the state of Louisiana is surrounded by grocery stores, shopping malls, movie theaters, banks, and fast food restaurants where concealed handgun permit holders are legally authorized to carry concealed handguns; yet, none of those locations have seen rampant gun violence or other problems caused by CHP holders. In fact, of the 27,422 concealed handgun permits issued by the Louisiana State Police since 1996, only 25 have been revoked for felony offenses. According to the Louisiana State Police, there was not a single documented death or accident involving a concealed handgun permit holder in all of 2007.

Louisiana’s experience with “concealed carry” is not unique. Over the last twenty-one years, the number of states with liberal concealed carry laws has increased from nine to forty. Of the thirty-one states that have liberalized their concealed carry laws—making concealed carry more accessible to the general public—during that time, none have seen a resulting increase in gun crime. All thirty-one have seen their overall crime rates decline at a rate equal to or greater than the national average.

Those who claim that college campuses are “special” or “different” than surrounding areas would do well to look at the eleven U.S. colleges (all nine public colleges in the state of Utah, Colorado State University, and Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, VA) that currently allow concealed carry on campus. After allowing concealed carry on campus for a combined total of seventy-two semesters, not one of those schools has seen a single resulting incident of gun violence (including threats and suicides), a single gun accident, or a single gun theft.

Much of the success of concealed carry can be attributed to the screening and training processes in place. In Louisiana, as in most states, only adults—age twenty-one and above—who attend a state mandated training course, pass both a written and a shooting test, and undergo extensive state and federal fingerprint and background checks can obtain a concealed handgun permit. Numerous studies* have concluded that concealed handgun permit holders are five times less likely than non-permit holders to commit violent crimes (less likely than even police officers in some states).

Unable to erode HB 199’s support with fact-based evidence, some opponents have suggested that its passage might threaten the heart and soul of the South—football. Opponents have persuaded LSU head football coach Les Miles and the rest of the LSU coaching staff that the presence of concealed carry on campus might jeopardize recruiting by making the parents of prospective recruits nervous. This argument not only ignores the fact that five NCAA Division I schools already allow concealed carry on campus and the fact that coaches cannot currentlyguarantee parents that student athletes won’t wander into the perilous “gun zones” beyond the sidewalk borders of campus, it also infers that parents should be more concerned with trained, licensed, carefully screened adults who want to LEGALLY carry guns on campus than with the criminals who might already be carrying guns on campus ILLEGALLY. Until LSU installs metal detectors and X-ray machines at everyentrance and begins screening all 35,000 students and faculty members on a daily basis, no coach can guarantee parents a gun free campus.

On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims—He wasn’t concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech’s status as a “gun free zone,” this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire. Every year, students across the country find themselves the victims of hate crimes and sexual assaults. Current rules leave these individuals little recourse but to close their eyes and hope and pray that the attack will end quickly. As SCCC’s Director of Public Relations Katie Kasprzak put it, “It’s time to do away with arbitrary school policies and state laws that stack the odds in favor of dangerous criminals who have no regard for school policy or state law.”

SCCC – PRESS RELEASE Page 2 of 2

For more information contact Katie Kasprzak at Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.org.

*“Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of over 30,000 college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun permits should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. SCCC is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

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SCCC – Press Release – National Conference

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT: Students for Concealed Carry on CampusKatie Kasprzak - Director of Public Relations Katie.Kasprzak@concealedcampus.orghttp://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS ANNOUNCES NATIONAL CONFERENCE

On August 1, 2008, college students from throughout the United States will attend the first Students for Concealed Carry on Campus National Conference, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

This distinguished, one-day event will feature many noteworthy speakers and guests. Among them will be Dr. John R. Lott, world reputed scholar and author of More Guns Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.

All students will receive one free night at a hotel in or around the D.C. area, and students traveling outside a 750-mile radius of D.C. will receive a $250 travel stipend. The stipend is limited to the first 30 students that respond. An announcement will be made once the limit has been reached.

SCCC’s national organizers strongly encourage all members to attend this historic event. Those in attendance will have an opportunity to meet and network with like-minded individuals from throughout the United States, make important contacts, hear world-renowned scholars speak about concealed carry on college campuses and visit the nation’s capital.

For more information contact Katie Kasprzak at Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.orgor visit www.ConcealedCampus.org.

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of over 30,000 college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun permits should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. SCCC is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

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SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Katie Kasprzak – Director of Public Relations Katie.Kasprzak@concealedcampus.org(832) 444-0328 http://www.ConcealedCampus.com

KANSAS FEDERATION OF STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS RESPOND TO KANSAS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR MARK PARKINSON

The KS Federation of SCCC applauds all efforts by universities and colleges to improve the safety and well being of students. This process should be on-going and continuously evaluated for improvement.

The KS Federation of SCCC wants to know why individuals who are deemed by state and federal authorities to be competent and trustworthy enough to carry concealed handguns elsewhere are denied this right on college campuses. The KS Federation of SCCC advocates concealed carry, by licensed adults, ages 21 and over, to be permitted at all public universities and colleges in Kansas. After a combined total of more than seventy semesters, none of the eleven colleges that already allow concealed carry on campus, all nine public universities in Utah, Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave, VA and Colorado State University, have seen a single resulting incident of gun violence, a single gun accident or a single gun theft.

College campuses in Kansas are attempting to implement equipment to alert students on a mass scale through e-mail, text message and voice mail alerts. These communication methods are intended to warn students any time there is a dangerous situation on campus.

While technology has helped improve security, it also has its problems. The instant message alert system at Kansas State University has been unsuccessful because it is reportedly taking some students up to half an hour to receive the alert via text message. Some campuses across Kansas prohibit law enforcement officers from carrying weapons of any type to keep students safe and Johnson County Community College, the largest college in Kansas, has several emergency phones out of service. These are just a few examples of security and safety problems universities and colleges in Kansas are facing.

The Kansas Board of Regents recently adopted a weapons free policy at the six state university campuses. KS Federation of SCCC feels this policy needs to be revoked to allow licensed adults, ages 21 and over, the choice to carry concealed handguns on campus. Declaring a college campus a “gun Free zone” does nothing to deter dangerous criminals, rapist and robbers. Denying licensed individuals the means to defend themselves on college campuses turns institutions of higher learning into supermarkets for would-be rapists and mass murderers.

KS Fed of SCCC believes all Kansas students should have the right to defend themselves from harms way on campus. Licensed students, ages 21 and over, can already carry concealed handguns throughout their everyday activities in places such as the grocery store, the mall, movie theaters, office buildings, churches, etc. Crossing the imaginary line on a college campus should not prohibit law-abiding citizens from defending themselves in the midst of an attack.

For more information contact Katie Kasprzak at Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.com.

SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization that advocates for concealed handgun permit holders to enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. SCCC is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

Kansas Federation of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has chapters at the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Kansas State University-Salina Campus, Wichita State University, Washburn University, Washburn University School of Law, Fort Hays State University, Emporia State University and Johnson County Community College.

The following is a column by Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson:

For immediate release: Nicole Corcoran, Press Secretary August 19, 2008 785.368.8500

Campus Safety

Recently, universities across the country, including those in Kansas, have taken additional measures to prevent crime and ensure that they can respond quickly and effectively in an emergency.

Research by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact reveals that 87 percent of the colleges and universities responding to its survey conducted comprehensive reviews of campus safety and security in the year following the terrible events at Virginia Tech; and that nearly 90 percent of those institutions made changes to procedures or security systems.

In Kansas, several campuses acted to install and implement new communications equipment and software allowing them to mass-mail safety warnings to students via text messages, e-mails, voice-mails, and public announcements.

When the Virginia Tech Review Panel Report was published, the Kansas Board of Regents began reviewing the recommendations, as well as the recommendations of a similar report from the National Association of Attorneys General, to ensure that existing campus security plans appropriately addressed the critical areas discussed in those reports.

In addition, the Board of Regents adopted official policy that each of the six state university campuses be weapon-free, instructed the campuses to conduct criminal background checks on all newly-hired employees, and will utilize a private security consultant to evaluate and objectively review the unique security plans of each of the campuses.

While we can not guarantee that bad things won't happen, it is clear that the Board of Regents is working to make our state university campuses as safe as possible. If each and every student also takes measures to promote their own personal safety, working together, we can reduce the incidence of crime on campus and enable the business of teaching and learning to flourish.

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SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Katie Kasprzak – Director of Public Relations Katie.Kasprzak@concealedcampus.orghttp://www.ConcealedCampus.com

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS (SCCC) ENDORSES THE MONTANA SHOOTING SPORTS ASSOCIATION’S “SEND A MESSAGE CAMPAIGN”

The national college-based organization, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) announces their full support of the Montana Shooting Sports Association’s “Send a Message” campaign. The campaign is a coalition of pro-Second Amendment groups urging Montana taxpayers to vote against the Montana University System's six-mill levy (LR-118 on the ballot) to end taxpayer funding of dangerous victim disarmament zones imposed by the Montana University System.

SCCC is joining forces with MSSA in result to the University System’s unwillingness to hold meaningful dialogue or negotiations concerning the system’s firearms policies. MSSA’s attempts to reason with campus officials and the Board of Regents regarding campus gun bans have been ignored for over a year. SCCC is asking Montana taxpayers to help “Send a Message” to the University System by voting against LR-118 on the General Election ballot in November.

“One of the tenets of a university is to foster intellectual dialogue and debate, yet the governing authority of the Montana University System is hampering and stifling such dialogue and debate,” said SCCC President Michael Guzman. “Every year, thousands of college students across the nation are victims of assault, rape, robbery and burglary on college campuses. Students and university employees are barred from utilizing the same type of self-defense they are already allowed to use off campus. We ask that the tax payers of Montana refuse to further increase state spending on the Montana University System until they at least take part in meaningful discussions about the safety of their students and employees," said Guzman.

Other groups organized in the coalition include Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). All of the parties involved have voiced their criticism of the failed and deadly policies that have lead to student massacre sites like the ones at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University.

For more information contact Katie Kasprzak at Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.org.

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun permits should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun permits the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. SCCC is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

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SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:Katie Kasprzak – Director of Public Relations Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.org(832) 444-0328 www.ConcealedCampus.com

SCCC ANNOUNCES FIRST NATIONAL “PITCH IT TO THE PEOPLE WEEK”

During the week of November 17-21, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus will hold its first national Pitch it to the People Week. The Pitch it to the People Week is intended to serve as an opportunity for all SCCC members to contribute to diminishing the negative preconceived notions that permeate most debates about concealed carry on college campuses.

"SCCC's National Pitch it to the People Week is a great opportunity for college students, young and old alike, to join with parents, university faculty and concerned community members in making the case for lawful self defense on our nation's college campuses," said Al Baker, SCCC Vice President. "This is a chance for students to interact with elected officials, communicate with the media, educate their friends and family and reach out to their communities about the issue of concealed carry on college campuses."

During the Pitch it to the People Week, SCCC members will pitch their cause to fellow students, college faculty and staff, state legislators and local media outlets. By flooding their communities with factual information about concealed carry on college campuses, SCCC members hope to dispel the misinformation and misleading rhetoric that tend to impede rational debate on this issue.

For more information contact Katie Kasprzak at Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.org.

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun permits should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun permits the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. SCCC is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

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SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 11, 2008

CONTACT:Jim Manley 303.292.2021 (office)303.859.8315 (cell)

CU STUDENTS FILE LAWSUIT CHALLENGING CU'S GUN BAN

Two University of Colorado students and one CU alumnus, represented by Mountain States Legal Foundation, have filed a lawsuit challenging the University of Colorado's ban on licensed concealed carry in El Paso County District Court today asking the court to strike down CU's ban on licensed concealed carry on campus.

Martha Altman, CU-Denver, Eric Mote, CU-Colorado Springs alumnus, and John Davis, CU-Colorado Springs, plaintiffs in the suit, are members of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, also a party to the suit. Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national advocacy group with over 35,000 members nationally and over 200 members on CU's Colorado Springs, Denver, and Boulder campuses. SCCC supports the legalization of concealed carry by licensed individuals on college campuses.

"Gun-free zones have failed," said Michael Guzman, SCCC President. "SCCC does not want a gun in every student's or professor's hands, but it is absurd that someone can legally carry on one side of the street but not the other. A total ban on licensed concealed carry does not improve safety and we have seen that such policies can lead to tragedy."

The suit is based on the fact that the 2003 Concealed Carry Act gives licensed adults over the age of 21 the right to carry everywhere in the state and prohibits local regulations that conflict with the Act. The Act includes only four exceptions to the right to carry: locations prohibited by federal law; K-12 schools; public buildings with metal detectors; and private property. C.R.S. § 18-12-214. Significantly absent from that list of exceptions: university campuses. Moreover, the CU Regents are among those local governments prohibited from enforcing regulations that conflict with the Act.

The suit also alleges that CU's weapons ban is so broad that it violates the Colorado Constitution, which protects the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

"The right to keep and bear arms is an essential component of individual liberty," said William Perry Pendley, President and Chief Legal Officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation. "No law-abiding adult should be denied the ability to protect herself, either on or off campus."

Concealed handgun permit holders must be over the age of 21 and undergo an extensive background check confirming that they have no history of substance abuse or criminal activity, are not subject to a protection order, and have demonstrated competency with a handgun. Statistics show that less than 1% of permits have ever been revoked in Colorado (http://www.rmgo.org/faq/CCW%20Permits%20by%20county.pdf).

For more information, see the attached litigation backgrounder and media advisory, contact Jim Manley at 303-292-2021, ext. 25, or visit Mountain States Legal Foundation at www.mountainstateslegal.org and Students for Concealed Carry on Campus at www.concealedcampus.org.

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SCCC – PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:Katie Kasprzak – Director of Public Relations Katie.Kasprzak@concealedcampus.org

SCCC Denounces “Walk Out and Rally: No Guns on Campus” Protest on April 16

John Woods, Virginia Tech Alumnus and University of Texas graduate student, along with Students for Gun-Free Schools, is organizing a "Walk Out and Rally: No Guns on Campus" protest on April 16th, the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting. The protest’s objective is to denounce HB1893, Representative Driver's (R-Garland) bill that would permit concealed handgun license holders to carry concealed handguns on the campuses of institutions of higher learning.

In a recent interview with The Brown Daily Herald, “Woods found it ‘personally upsetting’ that the Virginia Tech shooting is quoted as a context for the introduction of the bills.”

Woods is clearly applying a double standard for himself and supporters of concealed carry when invoking the Virginia Tech tragedy. Woods is using the anniversary of the Virginia Tech tragedy as a day to score cheap political points while exploiting this tragedy for political gain.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus will neither host nor endorse any protests during the week of April 13-17. SCCC views April 16 as a day of remembrance and prayer for the students, faculty, and families affected by the Virginia Tech shooting. SCCC wishes to avoid any action that might distract or detract from the memory of the individuals lost on April 16, 2007.

For more information contact Katie Kasprzak at Katie.Kasprzak@ConcealedCampus.org or visit www.ConcealedCampus.org.

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of over 38,000 college students, college faculty members, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun permits should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. SCCC is not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.

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Download a digital (PDF) copy of this handbook here:

http://www.StudentsForConcealedCarryOnCampus.com

Visit the SCCC media archive to read newspaper and magazine articles, listen to radio interviews, and watch TV interviews and news reports:

http://www.ConcealedCampus.org/media_center.php

�“Empty holsters on campus: PC leaves innocents defenseless�” © 2007 The Washington Times

�“More Guns on Campus?�” © 2008 Newsweek

�“Gun Facts Version 5.0�” © 2008 Guy Smith

�“Right-to-Carry 2008�” © 2008 National Rifle Association, Institute for Legislative Action

�“Gun Control: Brady Anti-CCW Campaign Continues�” © 2007 Howard Nemerov

�“Lies, damn lies, and VPC statistics�” © 2009 John Pierce

All Original Content © 2007, 2008, 2009 Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, LLC