A Texas Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation that would provide a massive nationwide boost to citizens’ ability to defend themselves against armed attackers on school campuses.
Texas Rep. Randy Weber has introduced legislation in the house which reflects a new Texas law requiring public universities to permit students and employees to legally carry concealed handguns on campus.
Weber’s Protect Against School Shootings (PASS) Act, which has the support of 15 of his GOP colleagues, would permit anyone legally allowed to carry concealed under state law to bring their self-defense firearms onto traditionally gun-free school grounds. It would also, importantly, remove penalties for the “discharge a firearm in defense of self or others, in a school zone.”
Weber and the bills other supporters say the legislation is a common sense answer to the horror of school shooting violence.
“Unfortunately, the Obama administration believes making the lives of lawfully armed citizens tougher will solve this issue,” Weber told the Washington Examiner. “Lawfully armed citizens are the most responsible class of gun owners, and concealed handgun owners can make communities safer.”
Supporters of the 2nd Amendment guarantee of armed self-defense have long lamented that gun free zones make the most inviting targets for mass shooters interested in racking up casualties by targeting defenseless victims. And recent analysis of mass shooting data shows unequivocally that they’re right.
An analysis of mass shooting data from Stanford recently conducted by the Heritage Foundation showed that places with federal, state, local and private gun-free policies are more than twice as likely to be targeted by mass shooters.
Heritage studied 54 separate random mass shootings— where three or more victims not related to or a criminal adversary of the shooter were injured or killed. Thirty-seven of those incidents (69 percent) occurred in an area where lawful carry of firearms for self-defense was banned.
And based on a different data set, the Crime Prevention Research Center determined in 2014:
There are only two mass public shootings since at least 1950 that have not been part of some other crime where at least four people have been killed in an area where civilians are generally allowed to have guns. These are the International House of Pancakes restaurant in Carson City, Nevada on September 6, 2011 and the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson, Arizona on January 8, 2011.
Weber noted that the shooter in the 2012 Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting was a perfect example of a mass shooter going out of his way to target a gun-free zone.
“It was not the closest theater to him, but it was the one where he knew he would find the least resistance,” he said.
The national campus carry legislation comes as a number of states are enacting similar laws to allow students and teachers to protect themselves on campus.
GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has also spoken out against gun free zones, vowing to allow lawful concealed carry on campuses if elected to the White House.
“Now, you know what a gun-free zone is to a sicko? That’s bait,” Trump said in a speech at the beginning of the year.
“A gun-free zone. … That ends immediately. We’re going back to sanity in this country.”
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