March 16, 2011
Texas Legislature
Texas Capitol Building
Austin, Texas
Re: Proposed Legislation to Permit Weapons to Be Carried on Texas College and University Campuses (HB 750, HB 86, HB 1167. HB 1356)
Dear Committee Members:
My name is Eric B. Schupper. I am an attorney practicing law in Austin, Texas with the law firm Kasling, Hemphill, Dolezal & Atwell, LLP. I earned my law degree from the Duke University School of Law in 2000. In 1997 I earned a Master of Science degree from the Harvard School of Public Health, where I studied public health and environmental risk assessment and risk management and was a graduate research assistant to the Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. I am a veteran of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, with which I served from 1988 to 1991 and participated in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I offer this testimony in my personal capacity as a resident of Travis County, Texas concerned about the public safety threat posed by the proposed legislation (HB 86, HB 750, HB 1167 and HB 1356) that would force Texas colleges and universities to permit students, faculty and staff to carry firearms on campus, including in places with high concentrations of people such as classrooms, dorms, laboratories, hospitals, workspaces, libraries and athletic events.
College campuses are complicated by high academic and social stress, the presence of alcohol and drugs, and young students who are away from home for the first time. From a risk-management standpoint, it is not only illogical to suggest that enacting legislation that allows students, faculty and staff to carry firearms on university campuses would serve in any way to deter people from carrying firearms on campus, but the premise that permitting firearms to be carried on campus would reduce the risk of intentional or accidental death or injury from firearms is fundamentally flawed and is not supported by evidence. Permitting firearms to be carried on campus increases the likelihood that people will in fact carry firearms on campus. Increasing the number of individuals, particularly young students, carrying firearms on campuses throughout Texas increases the likelihood that some hormonal, stressed-out or pissed-off 20-yr-old will decide to use it against his or her cheating girlfriend or boyfriend, a roommate who snores too loudly, or a faculty member who gave him or her a bad grade that may affect the student’s chance of getting accepted to graduate school. Moreover, it would increase the risk that in a scenario in which someone pulls a gun in class or at a sporting event, people who lack training with firearms and who, unless they served in the military, have no idea what it is to train one's sights on another human or how to remain composed when looking at the wrong end of another’s gun, resort to vigilantism and end up killing or wounding not the perpetrator, but innocent bystanders. Furthermore, if an incident occurs on campus and people are carrying firearms, it increases the chances that someone other than the perpetrator may be shot by campus police. Such were the opinions of Virginia Tech campus police interviewed by the Virginia Tech Review Panel in the wake of the shootings there a couple years ago. Quoting from page 75 of the Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel (hereinafter, the “Virginia Tech Report”): "[I]f numerous people had been rushing around with handguns outside Norris Hall on the morning of April 16, the possibility of accidental or mistaken shooting would have increased significantly. The campus police said that the probability would have been high that anyone emerging from a classroom at Norris Hall holding a gun would have been shot." See, Virginia Tech Report, p. 75, attached.
In my view, legislation that would allow firearms to be carried on campus is misguided and reflects a failure to analyze and appreciate the potential risks to public safety, the sanctity of the college learning environment, and to understand human psychology.
When I was in the military, even trained soldiers did not carry weapons on base unless they were going to the firing range. Even then, ammunition was dispensed at the range under controlled conditions. Untrained civilian students, faculty and staff should not be carrying firearms, concealed or openly, on Texas university campuses. It will increase the risk of death and injury from firearms, and will almost certainly increase the incidence of such deaths and injuries. Campus police chiefs in Virginia interviewed by the Virginia Tech Review Panel concluded essentially the same thing: “Having more guns on campus poses a risk of leading to a greater number of accidental and intentional shootings than it does in averting some of the relatively rare homicides.” See Virginia Tech Report, p. 75.
Furthermore, as a lawyer, I have studied constitutional law, including Second Amendment jurisprudence. The 2nd Amendment reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." More than 200 years of United States Supreme Court jurisprudence interpreting the Constitution have made it clear that neither the rights conferred by the 2nd Amendment, nor the rights guaranteed by other Amendments, including the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and assembly, are limitless and unfettered. Nearly all rights are limited by one bound or another, including sometimes by other constitutionally guaranteed rights. One may not run into a crowded movie theater and yell "Fire!" when there is no fire, for example. The interest in protecting public safety in that instance outweighs the individual's right to yell "Fire!". Similarly, in my view it is not an unconstitutional abridgment of anyone's 2nd Amendment right to keep and bare arms to prohibit firearms from being carried, openly or concealed, on college campuses if it is determined that allowing firearms to be carried on college campuses poses too high a risk to public safety. I believe that permitting firearms to be carried on college and university campuses in Texas creates an unnecessary and unwarranted increase in risk to public safety.
One of the recommendations of the Virginia Tech Report was that “guns be banned on campus grounds and in buildings.” See Virginia Tech Report, p. 76. I respectfully request that members of the Texas legislature vote “NO” on any legislation that would force Texas colleges and universities to allow firearms to be carried on campus by anyone other than trained law enforcement and campus security personnel. Keep firearms banned from Texas college campuses.
Respectfully submitted,
Eric B. Schupper, Sc.M., J.D.
