(GunReports.com) — From the Gun Owners of America:
A measure to allow Texas concealed carry permit holders to carry a firearm in college campus buildings stalled in the Texas State Senate for the second time earlier this week.
On Wednesday, pro-gun Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) offered the campus carry language as an amendment to Senate Bill 5, which is a separate bill dealing with college-related financial issues. The author of that legislation, Higher Education Committee Chairwoman Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), is so anti-Second Amendment that she pulled down her own bill rather than see the Wentworth amendment pass.
Sen. Wentworth is also the sponsor of a stand-alone campus carry bill, SB 354, which was blocked from getting a floor vote a couple of weeks ago when two senators—Eddie Lucio (D-Brownsville) and Mario Gallegos (D-Houston)—pulled their support. By rule, Senate legislation requires a super-majority of 2/3 votes of senators present, and the defection by the turncoat senators doomed the bill.
This led Sen. Wentworth to try attaching campus carry as an amendment to SB 5, since amendments only need a simple majority of 16 senators to pass.
Campus carry is an important, commonsense safety matter. All too often, so-called “gun free zones” such as college campuses are really nothing more than criminal safe zones. Laws against self-protection virtually guarantee that the only person armed at the scene of an attack will be the criminal, as was the case at Virginia Tech in 2007 and the University of Illinois in 2008.
Sen. Wentworth’s bill will simply give law-abiding adults who went through the process of getting a concealed carry permit the ability to defend themselves and others in campus buildings.
Click here for more information and details on contacting Texas State Senators for action.
