Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a brief Tuesday morning to defend campus carry, just one day after the new state law went into effect.
Students, faculty and visitors licensed to conceal and carry can now do so on college campuses but campus carry could be short-lived.
On Thursday, a federal judge will determine whether to grant a request from three University of Texas at Austin professors to block the campus carry law, before the fall semester begins later this month.
Paxton asked the U.S. District Court Tuesday to dismiss the lawsuit filed, which he described as “frivolous.”
Filed in July, the suit refers to the campus carry law as “overly solicitous” and “dangerously-experimental.”
Paxton said he’s confident the lawsuit will be dismissed “because the Legislature passed a constitutionally-sound law.”
In a statement written statement released Tuesday, Paxton said “There is no legal justification to deny licensed, law-abiding citizens on campus the same measure of personal protection they are entitled to elsewhere in Texas.”
In between summer school exams, students discussed the new law and talked about safety on Austin’s campus Tuesday afternoon. “We’re allowed to do this under the Second Amendment right,” said Austin Cole, a PhD Candidate UT.
Other students said professors should have the right to say “my classroom, my rules.” A college senior, Samantha Quintanilla said some teachers already ban cell phones and laptops and each professor sets different parameters for their own classrooms. “Why not give them that opportunity when it’s also their safety?” Quintanilla said, “and I think when we are in a classroom it’s also their responsibility as professors to protect us.”
Students for Concealed Carry have long argued guns add a layer of protection that’s needed on college campuses.
A junior, Cooper Latimer said he feels less safe at UT since campus carry went into effect. “We already have an abundance of guns everywhere else and it’s obviously become a problem,” Latimer said.
Cole, who supports campus carry, said he will not bring a gun on campus but as he sees it, the law is about protecting the U.S. Constitution and people’s Second Amendment rights.
“This is a public university,” Cole said, “you have a responsibility to uphold the rights of individuals on your campus.”
Private universities can opt out of the law and all but one private college ban guns on campus.
Gov. Abbott signed campus carry and open carry into law on June 13, 2015. The legislation allowed public university presidents to designate “gun-free zones” on college campuses.
