TexasCHLforum.com

To answer your question will381796, I do believe campus police would turn you over to university officials, since they enforce university policy along with the law. To a non-student or non-employee, even if they found your gun in your car, you broke no law. But since you work for the university, my understanding is that you would be breaking a university policy, in which campus police enforce.

This is one of those Catch-22 situations.

The police can use the "gun- and drug-sniffing" dogs if they have some slim pretext for suspecting that there are drugs in a vehicle. The dogs apparently can't tell their handlers whether they sniffed guns or drugs. Then the police have probable cause to search the vehicle, which does not require a warrant.

They cannot legally arrest for a firearm or ammunition found in a vehicle, since that is perfectly legal.

They can tell the administration what they found. There is no privacy aspect to this kind of search. Whether they would or not, I don't know.

This was exactly the situation at the Weyerhauser plant in Oklahoma circa 2003. The police were called to investigate drug rumors and found employees legally storing weapons in their vehicles. Those employees were fired.

The situation becomes even murkier if you have university police who can enforce university policies as well as the law.

There is going to be a gray area here until the legislature clears it up.

The university has the power to make and enforce policy, but their power to do so for employee activities outside the campus is dubious. They cannot legally prohibit you from engaging in a constitutionally protected activity such as storing a weapon in your vehicle that is parked on a public street -- but they can try. If the NRA or ACLJ doesn't come to your defense, and you can't afford Dick DeGuerin or Rusty Hardin, you're up a creek.

As usual, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

- Jim

I found out quick just what my campus police thought about a chl having a gun on campus. This was last year when the national empty holster protest was going on and I went talk to the capmus police chief to notify him I would be participating in a national event and carrying an empty holster (which campus police felt it necessary to 'warn' all the students about through mass email). I informed him that legislation would be introduced this year to allow concealed carry on campus and boy did he get all burred up, "is that sooo..." and I tried to tell him about Colorado already allowing students to carry to which he replied, "well this sure ain't Colorado." I also asked him about a chl leaving his/her gun in the car while on campus and he very matter of factly stated that not only is that against university policy, but Texas has a state law prohibiting weapons within 600 or 1000 ft. (I don't remember which) of a school. Apparently we have some faculty that are chl's as well because he said he's been asked by staff the same gun in the vehicle question by them (whom he also told the same story).

A University's policy (governing employees) may not differ from state law. Here is Texas A&M University's policy (http://rules-saps.tamu.edu/PDFs/34.06.02.M1.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). It reads to me like it conforms with state law, i.e., premises refer to buildings.

Sorry for not clearing up which campus I attend J.R. College station surely looks like it abides by state law, to which I even recall reading an article in the batt from university police advocating a chl'ers ability to store their handgun in their vehicles. If only that was the same mentality here at the Galveston campus. There was a 'safety meeting' held here a couple days ago by campus police and I heard that the police chief's answer to a student's question about his opinion on the new pending legislation on allowing concealed handguns on campus he said if it were up to him firearms would never be allowed to be on campus period. Much less carrying to class and what not. Which to me means that he knows the current law and still opposes it, which just further seals in concrete my initial interactions with him per say.

Another mistake on my part, I was not accounting for a variance between student/university employee. Here is a link to the article I was referring to in my previous post regarding students http://media.www.thebatt.com/media/stor ... 9903.shtml I have seen posts from people on this website that the university/community college prohibits employees per university/community college policy from possesing firearms while on campus. Hence the reason for my assuming that an employee would be violating said university/community college policy but no state law.

Aggie_engr wrote:Sorry for not clearing up which campus I attend J.R. College station surely looks like it abides by state law, to which I even recall reading an article in the batt from university police advocating a chl'ers ability to store their handgun in their vehicles. If only that was the same mentality here at the Galveston campus. There was a 'safety meeting' held here a couple days ago by campus police and I heard that the police chief's answer to a student's question about his opinion on the new pending legislation on allowing concealed handguns on campus he said if it were up to him firearms would never be allowed to be on campus period. Much less carrying to class and what not. Which to me means that he knows the current law and still opposes it, which just further seals in concrete my initial interactions with him per say.

Was that the Galveston Chief or AMUG's Chief?

That would be A&M Galveston's campus police chief.

Aggie_engr wrote:That would be A&M Galveston's campus police chief.

Thanks, you just averted a nasty letter gram