TYLER, Texas — State Senator Bob Hall has filed a bill to allow licensed adults to conceal carry weapons on public schools and some charter school campuses. Hall says Senate Bill 514 is an extension of the open carry law which passed in 2015 for college campuses.
"The idea is that there will be people there, that anybody thinking about going to school to do harm to our kids will now know that there's a good chance that there may be one or more people there that are prepared to defend themselves," Hall said. "So, that will discourage them."
Under the bill, teachers, parents as well as students 18 and older with a license to carry (LTC) would be able to conceal carry their weapons on a public school or open-enrollment charter school campus.
Currently in Texas, those with an LTC may take their handgun to school, but it must be kept in a vehicle. Since 2013, the are two separate methods to allow educators and/or school district employees to carry handguns on campus, the Guardian and School Marshal plans.
The Guardian Plan doesn’t train school personnel as peace officers but lets them carry their weapons as long as they undergo district-specific training and have a handgun license.
Under the marshal program, school personnel, whose identities have to be kept confidential, are trained to act as armed peace officers in the absence of law enforcement. In 2019, the law was expanded to allow school districts to appoint an unlimited number of school marshals following the deadly mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018.
Hall says that these programs can get costly, and if his bill were to pass it could save schools money on safety.
"This doesn't cost anybody anything," the senator said. "These are just your ordinary, law-abiding God-loving citizens out there that believe they should be able to defend themselves and others when somebody wants to do harm."
Advocacy groups each legislative session argue that more guns should not be put into schools.
Hall feels that if SB 514 were to become a law, it would deter people from wanting to do harm there.
"We know from the number that have happened in our churches and in our school grounds, that people would pick those places because they are gun-free. So they know they can go there and not really have any resistance," Hall said.
The senator filed a similar piece of legislation back in 2019 regarding concealed carry on K-12 campuses. The bill failed during that legislative session.
However, after incidents like the West Freeway Church of Christ shooting in 2019, where a church member stopped a gunman who had killed two people, Hall thinks the bill will pass this time.
"What we have learned is that those people, when they're able to defend themselves, they stop bad things from happening to good people," the senator said.
SB 514 was filed Tuesday and Hall says it will soon be assigned to a committee to be reviewed.