Some who oppose campus concealed carry believe that heated classroom debates risk turning into a shootout if guns are allowed on campus.
The American Association of University Professors, among other higher educator groups, released a joint statement Thursday calling for efforts to restrict firearms on college campuses. The statement comes as a new law, which will allow concealed carry on Texas college campuses, takes effect at the beginning of next year.
“College campuses are marketplaces of ideas, and a rigorous academic exchange of ideas may be chilled by the presence of weapons. Students and faculty members will not be comfortable discussing controversial subjects if they think there might be a gun in the room,” the statement said.
William McRaven, chancellor for the University of Texas system and a former member of the Navy SEALs who rose to the rank of admiral, opposed passage of “campus carry” legislation in his state.
“I feel the presence of concealed weapons will make a campus a less-safe environment,” he said. “If you have guns on campus, I question whether or not that will somehow inhibit our freedom of speech. If you’re in a heated debate with somebody in the middle of a classroom and you don’t know whether or not that individual is carrying, how does that inhibit the interaction between students and faculty?”
The statement goes further to “support efforts to make college campuses as safe and weapon-free as possible for students, faculty, staff, parents, and community members.”
The organizations call for the repeal of all campus carry laws already in place and encourage the “embrace critical incident planning that includes faculty and staff and to advise all faculty and staff of these plans” as well as have educational “institutions to rely on trained and equipped professional law-enforcement personnel to respond to emergency incidents.”