AUSTIN, Texas — Two months ago, Texas looked ready to allow concealed handguns in college classrooms. Lawmakers lined up to sponsor a bill, pistol-packing Gov. Rick Perry supported it and gun control activists had all but conceded defeat.
Then students and administrators from the state’s universities mobilized in opposition, swaying two Democratic lawmakers who had supported the bill. Without them, the bill’s sponsor hasn’t had enough support to get a vote in the state Senate. Two attempts in the past week have failed, and the measure is now struggling to survive in a state that usually embraces guns and their mythical connection to the old West.
The effort to allow concealed handgun license holders to bring their weapons into college classrooms turned into a national issue after a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Supporters said they wanted to give students a chance to shoot back.
But dozens of states — including Texas — rejected bills allowing concealed carry on campuses before Republicans swept elections in November and gave the measures new life. Arizona recently passed a bill allowing license holders to carry handguns on campuses, although not in classrooms.
Still, for supporters like the national group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, Texas remains the big prize. Early signs the bill would pass there captured the attention of the international media, which could not resist the state’s larger-than-life reputation and frontier image.
Texas is where concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip metal detectors in the state Capitol, and Perry made headlines for shooting a coyote while out on a morning jog last year. State lawmakers are now considering a bill that would exempt them from bans on carrying guns into churches, sporting events and nursing homes.
Hearings on the measure were dominated by powerful testimony from supporters who had been raped or assaulted on campus and by opponents who survived the shootings at Virginia Tech and the University of Texas in 1966, when sniper Charles Whitman killed or wounded dozens of people.
