TexasCHLforum.com

Found by way of EmergencyEmily's blog:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/112174

Mostly an interview with W. Scott Lewis of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

Thanks for posting. That's a big one.

Sorry, double post.

That's a great article. The spokesman (W. Scott Lewis) for Students for Conceealed Carry did a fantastic job of explaining why allowing concealed carry would be a good thing. Especially, he did a great job of explaining the illogic and self deception inherent in the policy of banning concealed carry.

It's terrific that something like this is getting aired in the MSM.

I'm telling you guys, if my looney-left Kennedy-worshipping sister out in CA can connect the dots, it means that a lot of other people in America are connecting them as well.

Great article.

Mr. Lewis does an excellent job of framing the argument with the first question.

Although CHL was not legal in Texas when I went to college, 25+ years ago, the ROTC department drilled almost every weekend with M16's borrowed from the local National Guard unit. I was on the university pistol team and one of my (on campus) roomies was a reserve police officer. Many of my fellow ROTC members were Reserve or National Guard soldiers, veterans, active LEO's, etc... I'm pretty sure that firearms were not allowed in the dorms and do not recall where everyone stored them, most likely with off-campus friends who had apartments.

Some interesting comments on the article. Of course, there are always the nutcases..."Why not allow guns in elementary and middle schools, too? Massacres happen there, and I assume the kids who carry them out are probably "law-abiding" citizens. A well-trained and well-armed group of twelve-year-olds might be able to stop some kid who brought his "law-abiding" father's gun to class one day. Sounds logical, right? I realize that some people are afraid of the world and feel more masculine (and more willing to start a fight) when carrying a gun, but it hardly seems likely that increasing the number of hidden firearms in the US is going to make anyone safer."

Lodge2004 wrote:Some interesting comments on the article. Of course, there are always the nutcases..."Why not allow guns in elementary and middle schools, too? Massacres happen there, and I assume the kids who carry them out are probably "law-abiding" citizens. A well-trained and well-armed group of twelve-year-olds might be able to stop some kid who brought his "law-abiding" father's gun to class one day. Sounds logical, right?

Not at all. We don't allow twelve-year-olds to drive cars to school but many colleges allow their students to park cars on campus. The vast majority allow professors to park on campus. Even the ones that don't allow student parking because of space, allow college students to drive cars on campus if they have a license. We certainly don't have special laws prohibiting cars at schools despite the high number of vehicle-related deaths in the US.

We don't let twelve-year-olds drink alcohol either. You have to be 21 for that. Hey! That's the same age you have to be to get a CHL. There are a lot of things adults are allowed to do that elementary and middle school kids can't.

Lodge2004 wrote:Although CHL was not legal in Texas when I went to college, 25+ years ago, the ROTC department drilled almost every weekend with M16's borrowed from the local National Guard unit. I was on the university pistol team and one of my (on campus) roomies was a reserve police officer. Many of my fellow ROTC members were Reserve or National Guard soldiers, veterans, active LEO's, etc... I'm pretty sure that firearms were not allowed in the dorms and do not recall where everyone stored them, most likely with off-campus friends who had apartments.

I lived in the dorm my first year at Texas Tech. (That would have been the 1987-88 school year.) You weren't supposed to have firearms on campus. If you had one there, say for hunting, you were supposed to store it at the campus police headquarters and could check it in and out as needed. Of course you had to come on campus with it to get it to the campus police building. I guess that was allowed.
I'm pretty sure some students had guns in their dorms. I don't think anyone made a big deal of it. It was a different time.
And we paid about as much attention to that rule as we did the one about no alcohol on campus

When I turned 21 I was attending URI and living in a dormitory. On my 21st birthday I bought myself a Colt 38 spl. "Official Police" model (or something like that) revolver with a 4" barrel. I kept it in my room. I didn't know if it was against the rules or not and really could not have cared less. I remember as a freshman one of the other guys had a Crossman CO2 pistol that looked something like a 1911 and we use to shoot it at targets set up in the hallway. The RA didn't seem to mind and sometimes joined in.

If course I had no safety training or firearms training of any kind. All I knew about guns, growing up in a urban environment in New England, was what I saw on TV and in the movies. I was so dumb that I didn't even think to use ear protection when I would take it out into the woods to shoot it. So you might say that I was a disaster waiting to happen.

And it almost did. One night I had an AD in the room and came within a couple of inches of shooting my roommate in the head. Of course I violated every safety rule in the book, (muzzle awareness, finger inside the trigger guard, handing it to another - also unskilled - person fully loaded - you name it.)

Luckily no one was hurt and there were no repercussions.

What this brings to mind is that in TX there is no safety training required for the CHL course. The CHL class requirements "assume" that you already know how to safely handle a gun and have basic shooting skills. So theoretically, someone can get a CHL knowing as little about safe gun handling as I did as a 21 year old fool.

This could be a problem when trying to get "campus carry" passed.

Might it not be a good idea to require some kind of basic safety training to get a CHL? This could be a simple enhancement of the CHL class curriculum itself or it could be, as some states allow, just showing proof of completing an NRA type gun safety course.

I know people are concerned about letting the camel's nose into the tent. But I'm just going on my direct life experience. I personally came within a couple of inches of blowing my roommate away through ignorance of basic gun safety. If it could happen to me, it could happen to some other young person. And if it does, campus carry will be off the table for another 20 years.

Quote: "Might it not be a good idea to require some kind of basic safety training to get a CHL?"

Safe gun handling is supposedly an integral part of the TX CHL lesson plan - although it is apparently being given minimal attention by some. I best not get started here on some of what I've learned recently.

frankie_the_yankee wrote: What this brings to mind is that in TX there is no safety training required for the CHL course. The CHL class requirements "assume" that you already know how to safely handle a gun and have basic shooting skills. So theoretically, someone can get a CHL knowing as little about safe gun handling as I did as a 21 year old fool.

This could be a problem when trying to get "campus carry" passed.

Might it not be a good idea to require some kind of basic safety training to get a CHL? This could be a simple enhancement of the CHL class curriculum itself or it could be, as some states allow, just showing proof of completing an NRA type gun safety course.

Frankie, you sound like a yankee And you are also wrong. Apparently you are not a CHL instructor and you were not paying attention in your CHL Class, or you had a poor instructor. Safe Handling and Storage of Firearms is part of the required curriculum to be taught during the complete CHL classroom instruction of a minimum of 10 hours.

What is NOT taught in the CHL Class is basic marksmanship and gun handling on the range. THAT is what you are assumed to know when you do the qualification portion of the class.

But you are absolutely supposed to be taught Safe Handling and Storage of Firearms and if you were not, you need to take it up with your instructor.

I apologize for sounding harsh here but as far as the rest of your "argument" goes, it doesn't hold water. Don't limit the responsible CHL holders on campus by equating them to the irresponsible ones like you were.

Regards,
James

extremist wrote: Frankie, you sound like a yankee And you are also wrong. Apparently you are not a CHL instructor and you were not paying attention in your CHL Class, or you had a poor instructor. Safe Handling and Storage of Firearms is part of the required curriculum to be taught during the complete CHL classroom instruction of a minimum of 10 hours.

I'm not a CHL instructor and never claimed to be one.

I don't remember exactly what was covered in my first (10 hour) class, but if we went over safe handling and storage it wasn't to any great extent. Most of the class time was spent on matters relating to the laws on where and when you could legally carry, the laws on the use of deadly force, etc.

And realistically, how much time can be allocated to that subject given all the other things that also have to be covered in the CHL class? The NRA Home Firearms Safety course is something like 8-10 hours and all it covers is safe handling and storage (plus a brief stint on the range).

How many hours are intended to be devoted to safe handling and storage in the TX CHL course curriculum?

extremist wrote: I apologize for sounding harsh here but as far as the rest of your "argument" goes, it doesn't hold water. Don't limit the responsible CHL holders on campus by equating them to the irresponsible ones like you were.

Regards,
James

First off, I wasn't an irresponsible CHL holder. I was just an irresponsible and ignorant gun owner, with no training of any kind. I did not get a RI Pistol Permit until many years later.

Secondly, my argument holds water just fine. Certainly, I didn't see anything in your post that refuted it. I'm not equating responsible CHL holders with irresponsible ones. I am just saying that out of hundreds of thousands of people taking CHL courses, THERE WILL BE SOME IRRESPONSIBLE/IGNORANT ONES if we are not careful to do what we can to prevent it. And to me, some basic safety training would go a long way to prevent accidents.

And you can rest assured that any incident that happens on a college campus will get 100x more attention from the MSM than an AD in someone's kitchen.

Whatever the curriculum is supposed to cover, I can tell you that I witnessed some abyssimal gun handling at both my initial CHL class and at my renewal class last Spring. At that one, I had to push the muzzle of another person's gun away from my body as he was trying to figure out how to lock the slide back. (I ended up having to show him myself.) So whatever "safe handling and storage" training this guy got in his CHL course, it wasn't enough.

How many AD-related injuries or deaths do you think it will take to poison the well for campus carry? My guess is, "One."

I don't want to "limit" CHL holders on campus. I want to prevent the movement towards campus carry from being nipped in the bud due to some unfortunate, and preventable, accident.

Basically, I'm saying that coming off my own experience through one CHL class and one renewal, It might be possible that the curriculum can be improved.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:Whatever the curriculum is supposed to cover, I can tell you that I witnessed some abyssimal gun handling at both my initial CHL class and at my renewal class last Spring. At that one, I had to push the muzzle of another person's gun away from my body as he was trying to figure out how to lock the slide back. (I ended up having to show him myself.) So whatever "safe handling and storage" training this guy got in his CHL course, it wasn't enough.

Some instructors aren't willing to pull a student off the range for unsafe acts. If students spend an additional five or ten hours with those instructors and the instructors continue to condone unsafe gun handling, the only thing the extra time does is reinforce bad habits.

There are many good instructors but it sounds like there are some who teach to the test and show videos to fill up the rest of the time. Look at the posts by newbies asking things that should have been taught in class. (not gray areas, things like "premises" definition)

Another thing is that I know we are focused on TX here, but the campus carry movement is nationwide. There are shall issue states like NH for instance that have no training requirement whatsoever. So is it so far-fetched to think that a young kid in NH (or VT that doesn't require a license) could buy a gun and via his "TV training" have an AD or worse? And as I said, you can be sure that anything that happens on a campus will get huge media play compared to someone who has an AD (even with an injury) in their back yard.

Very interesting and fair article. The attempt by one guy (legislator I believe) to infer that it would be unsafe to "flood" campuses with firearms was dealt with properly. In that Governor Big Hair has apparently gotten onboard with this idea, maybe we'll see some change (positive) in Texas.

Reading this thread was educational, for me at least. First, I found out that Frankie and I are both Yankee Conference alumni (Univ. of Maine here) and experienced similar rule about firearms at school. At UMO, you were required to store you weapons and ammo at the Campus Police Station, but had basically 24 Hour access. My work study jod was as a dispatcher at the UMPD, so I can say that they student body had a pretty fair arsenal. Once I moved into a fraternity house, I found a similar minded group of shooters, and we had a nice group that shot trap/skeet several times a month nearby, and all kept our shotguns at the house.

Regarding the potential changes to CHL laws and schools, I think you would find a fair number of teachers/staff that would take advantage of a change in the law to use retain possession of their licensed handgun on school property. Not all of the teachers and stall in our schools subscribe to the anti-gun philosophy.

Good Reading.

Regards,

Jeff B.

Greybeard wrote:Safe gun handling is supposedly an integral part of the TX CHL lesson plan - although it is apparently being given minimal attention by some. I best not get started here on some of what I've learned recently.

When I took my CHL class, back in the dark ages, like in the first few months they were giving classes, I think most of the newly certified CHL instructors I was aware of had been NRA instructors for years.
If I remember correctly, about half of my class time was the usual NRA-type firearms safety course with the other half of the time concerning the legalities of concealed carry and the laws regarding the use of deadly force.