Selected SCC Press Releases on UT-Austin's Campus Carry Fears

and the 1966 UT-Austin Sniper Attack

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 02/25/2016

Campus carry isn't bad for higher education; paranoia about campus carry is

AUSTIN, TX - In enlightened modern America, the risk of dying of a shark attack is most frequently
referenced in comparison to one's odds of winning the Powerball lottery, but in the summer of 1975,
America's coastal tourism business took a major hit as a result of the June release of the world's first
summer blockbusterJaws. The risk of dying from a shark attack was just as low then as it is todayin
fact, there were no fatal shark attacks in U.S. waters that yearbut a cinema-inspired nationwide bout
of galeophobia (fear of sharks) had real, negative consequences on the nation afflicted.

In a speech delivered February 4 at the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, U.S. President Barack Obama
said, "The consequences of [fear] can be worse than any outward threat." That statement is reflected
throughout America's checkered past, from fear of witchcraft leading to twenty executions in Salem,
Mass., to fear of vaccines leading to a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases. Now, Texas is seeing
fear of campus carry take a real, measurable toll on the state's institutions of higher education.
However, just as witches were not to blame for the Salem witch trials, and just as vaccines are not to
blame for the negative results of the anti-vaccine movement, campus carry is not to blame for the
current atmosphere of fear on Texas college campuses.

The professors threatening to resign their positions or remove controversial material from their
curricula have no more basis for their actions than did the people who canceled summer vacation plans
41 years ago. All available evidence suggests that licensed concealed carry will not make Texas college
campuses any less safe. The report of UT-Austin's campus carry policy working group notes, "Our
examination of states that already have campus carry revealed little evidence of campus violence that
can be directly linked to campus carry, and none that involves an intentional shooting...We found that
the evidence does not support the claim that a causal link exists between campus carry and an increased
rate of sexual assault. We found no evidence that campus carry has caused an increase in suicide rates
on campuses in other states." The report goes on to state, "We reached out to 17 research universities
in the seven campus-carry states...Most respondents reported that campus carry had not had much
direct impact on student life or academic affairs."

Those findings are consistent with the preponderance of peer-reviewed studies on licensed concealed
carryincluding a 2015 study from Texas A&M Universitywhich have found that concealed carry
cannot be shown to lead to an increase in violent crime. Statistically, a Texan is significantly more likely
to be struck by lightning than to be murdered or negligently killed by a concealed handgun license
(CHL)/license to carry (LTC) holder. Texas CHL/LTC holders are convicted of aggravated assault with a
deadly weapon at 1/7 the rate of unlicensed Texans (NOTE: that statistic includes all Texas children in
the number of unlicensed Texans; the contrast is even greater when only adults are counted).
Therefore, what basis do these professional academicsmen and women trained to rely on empirical
data when drawing conclusionshave for taking actions as drastic as resigning their positions or
dumbing-down course materials?
When a member of a hate group bombs a house of worship, society doesn't blame the worshipers for
scaring the attacker to the point of violence; we blame the fearmongers and hate speakers who taught
the attacker to fear and hate what he doesn't understand. Neither Texas's new campus carry law, the
legislators who passed it, nor the activists who pushed it are responsible for the actions of professors
overwhelmed by unjustified fear. Intellectually, these professors are no different than someone whose
actions are defined by an irrational fear of sharks, witchcraft, or vaccines. We can pity them for their
inability to function rationally, but we must not acquiesce to their phobic delusions.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 07/12/2016

Armed Citizens and the 1966 University of Texas Sniper Attack (RE-RELEASE)

Students for Concealed Carry is re-releasing this statement, which first appeared as an Oct. 30,
2015, post to the Students for Concealed Carry blog, in response to recent news coverage of
both the July 7 sniper attacks in Dallas and the upcoming 50th anniversary of the UT-Austin
sniper attack.

AUSTIN, TX - The August 1, 1966, sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin bears little
resemblance to more-recent campus shooting sprees (e.g., Virginia Tech and Umpqua Community
College). Rather than walking from classroom to classroom, executing victims, the shooter used a
scoped rifle to pick off victims from an elevated position. Police officers on the ground quickly realized
that their handguns were of little use against a sniper barricaded in a tower.

Of all the college massacres that have occurred in the U.S., the UT tower shooting is among the least
relevant to the current debate over legalizing the licensed concealed carry of handguns on college
campuses (aka campus carry). However, anti-campus carry advocates are now twisting one element of
this tragedy, trying to use it as evidence that more guns invariably equal more problems.

Within the past year, anti-campus carry activists have begun claiming that the citizens who used hunting
rifles to return fire at the UT sniper prevented first responders from reaching wounded victims on the
ground. This claim, which seems to have first appeared more than 46 years after the shooting, comes
from Claire Wilson James, the first person shot during the attack. During the 2013 and 2015 Texas
Legislative Session, James testified before legislative committees, in opposition to Texass then-pending
campus carry legislation. During her testimony, she made the now widely repeated claim that armed
citizens impeded her rescue.

In an interview conducted a few weeks after her 2013 testimony, James said, Ive heard from the police
that stopped [the shooter] that day that [the armed citizens] actually made the situation more
dangerous and put the people who were trying to save us at risk.

This claim doesnt show up in other accounts of the incident, and the same interview includes some
rather bizarre statements from James. She says, We need to have a universal background check before
someone can carry a concealed weapon; however, in reality, an applicant for a Texas concealed
handgun license undergoes state and FBI fingerprint and background checks that far exceed any
proposed universal background check system. She also says, [The shooter] aimed for the chest of his
victims to kill them, but he aimed at my stomach (James was eight months pregnant at the time; her
baby did not survive); however, the shooter, who shot James from an elevated position while she was
moving, was killed in the standoff and never had a chance to tell anyone where he was aiming.

Jamess claim that the armed citizens impeded first responders is contradicted by other eyewitnesses
(including Ramiro Martinez, one of the three police officers who, along with an armed citizen, stormed
the tower) who credit the armed citizens with preventing greater loss of life.

One of the most comprehensive collections of eyewitness testimony on the UT sniper attack is 96
Minutes, a 2006 Texas Monthly article by Pamela Colloff. In the article, Colloff shares the accounts of
numerous eyewitnesses, including James. If James said anything to Colloff about the armed citizens
impeding her rescue, Colloffwho dedicates several paragraphs to eyewitness accounts of the armed
citizensneglected to include it in the article.

Colloff does, however, include this quote from Bill Helmer, a writer who was a graduate student at UT-
Austin when he witnessed the shooting: I remember thinking, All we need is a bunch of idiots running
around with rifles. But what they did turned out to be brilliant. Once [the sniper] could no longer lean
over the edge and fire, he was much more limited in what he could do. He had to shoot through those
drain spouts, or he had to pop up real fast and then dive down again. Thats why he did most of his
damage in the first twenty minutes.

Claire Wilson Jamess story, like the stories of the other victims from that day, is tragic. The story of
hunters stepping up to assist an outgunned police force (at that time, Austin had no SWAT team, and
officers did not routinely carry rifles in their squad cars) is an intriguing historical footnote. However,
neither the tragedy that befell James nor the actions of the armed citizens who tried to stop the shooter
has much to do with a law allowing the licensed concealed carry of handguns on Texas college
campuses.

Whereas the UT sniper attack lasted 96 minutes, a typical shootout (the kind not involving an assailant
firing from a highly elevated, fortified position hundreds of yards away) lasts only three to ten
seconds. Whereas one witness to the sniper attack recalled, It seemed like every other guy had a rifle,
Texas Department of Public Safety statistics suggest that the rate of concealed handgun licensure
among Texas college students is less than 1%. Unlike the armed citizens who rushed toward the UT
tower, Texas CHL holders are taught to move away from danger and avoid interfering in any incident
that doesnt already involve them. Although the armed citizens who responded to the UT sniper attack
were free to rush about campus with their rifles on full display, Texass new campus carry law will
requires CHL holders to keep their handguns concealed until and unless they encounter an immediate
threat (the sound of gunshots in the distance does not constitute an immediate threat).

Given that Claire Wilson Jamess account seems to be the only eyewitness account suggesting that
armed citizens impeded the rescue of victims, given that James apparently didnt make this claim until
the Texas Legislature began considering campus carry legislation, and given that simple physics shows
that gunfire aimed at the Tower's 231-foot-high observation deck would pose little threat to first
responders on the ground, her claim seems dubious at best. And given that the UT sniper attack was not
the type of attack against which a CHL holder might easily make a difference and that the armed citizens
who responded with rifles were not CHL holders (Texas didnt begin issuing CHLs until 1996) and had
likely never received instruction in how to handle such a situation, this incident is a very poor indicator
of how campus carry might impact a campus shooting.
NOTE: The coinciding of the August 1 effective date of Texas Senate Bill 11 (campus carry) and the 50th
anniversary of the UT sniper attack is an unfortunate coincidence. When the conference committee that
reconciled the House and Senate versions of the bill decided to push back the bills effective date, they
wanted the new date to precede the mid- to late-August start of the 2016 fall semester. The first of the
month seemed like an obvious choice.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 07/25/2016

The Campus Carry Debate Isn't as Simple as Guns Versus No Guns

AUSTIN, TX - Since the earliest days of the nearly decade-long debate over allowing concealed carry on
Texas college campuses, opponents of the idea have clung to the mistaken belief that the debate is
about whether a campus with guns is more or less safe than a campus without guns. They apparently
find it easier to wrap their heads around the simple dichotomy of 'guns versus no guns' than to grasp the
nuance of a debate about whether criminals should be the only ones carrying guns on campus or
whether vetted, licensed adults should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on campus
that they're already allowed virtually everywhere else.

Recently, this simplistic 'guns versus no guns' view has manifested itself in opponents' assertion that the
confusion caused by protesters who were openly carrying rifles when a sniper attacked a Black Lives
Matter protest in Dallas proves the dangers of campus carry. In a July 25 column in The Tribune of
Humble, Tex., Dave McNeely writes:

Some of the people marching in the Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas July 8 -- when five cops
were killed and seven others were injured, plus two civilians -- were carrying assault rifles.

Suspecting that the gun-toters might be involved in the ambush on the cops, a picture of one of
them was put up by the police on social media, to help track him down. It gained national
attention.

Fortunately, he and the other gun-toting marchers weren't taken out by law enforcement.

So, now, allowing more guns on campus. Will it help prevent violence, or help subdue it if it
occurs?

In an interview published July 22 on the blog CultureMap Austin, bestselling author Elizabeth Crook,
whose 2014 novel Monday, Monday depicts a fictionalized account of the August 1, 1966, sniper attack
at the University of Texas at Austin, states, "As for campus carry, I absolutely do not think it will deter
random acts of violence, I think its pretty certain to create them. We saw during the recent horrendous
shooting of police in Dallas how armed civilians endangered themselves, confused police, and were of
course utterly ineffective in stopping the sniper."

To these people it makes no difference that the armed citizens who caused confusion for Dallas police
were carrying rifles, not handguns; that the guns were carried openly, not concealed; that the gunsat
least some of which were purportedly unloadedwere carried as a form of protest, not as a measure of
self-defense; that proponents of campus carry have never claimed that the licensed, concealed carry of
handguns offers defense against a sniper firing from a concealed position; that concealed carry is about
personal protection, not public protection; or that Texas license to carry (LTC) holders are taught to
move away from the sound of gunfire and stay out of the way of police.

As is the case with opponents who point to the 1966 University of Texas sniper attack as evidence that
campus carry is a bad idea, those who point to the July 7 sniper attack on Dallas police understand
neither the facts of the referenced crime nor the real arguments behind campus carry.

Antonia Okafor, Southwest regional director for Students for Concealed Carry, commented, Only after
opponents realize that the campus carry debate isn't as simple as 'guns versus no guns' will we, as a
society, be able to have an intellectual, fact-based conversation about this deeply nuanced issue.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 07/28/2016

Campus Carry and the University of Texas: Unfortunate Timing and Revisionist History

AUSTIN, TX - Nobody in the Texas Legislature ever intended for the effective date of the state's campus
carry law to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1966 tower shooting at the University of Texas at
Austin. The selection of August 1, 2016, as the effective date for Texas Senate Bill 11 was part of a
compromise worked out by the ten-member conference committee tasked with reconciling differences
between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

The version passed by the Texas Senate established an effective date of September 1, 2015. The version
passed by the House established an effective date of September 1, 2016. The conference committee
agreed to a compromise whereby the bill would take effect in 2016 but before the mid- to late-August
start of most fall semesters, so as to avoid having the law change days or weeks after the start of
classes. Because new laws typically go into effect on the first of the month, the committee settled on an
effective date of August 1, 2016, and that change was ratified by both chambers of the Texas
Legislature.

With a bit more time to consider the matter, one of the 181 Texas legislators might have recognized
August 1 as the anniversary of UT-Austin's infamous tower shootingthe first mass shooting at a U.S.
collegehowever, by the time the conference committee report was issued to the full Legislature,
lawmakers had less than 48 hours to approve it, or the bill would die. Four days after the conference
committee report was adopted and three days after the Texas Legislature adjourned sine die, the Los
Angeles Times reported that the campus carry bill would take effect during the same month as the 50th
anniversary of the tower shooting. It wasn't until four months later that an article in the UT-Austin
alumni magazine Alcalde brought public attention to the fact that the bill's effective date and the 50th
anniversary of the shooting are one and the same.

This unfortunate coinciding of dates could have been avoided by establishing an effective date of August
15a date that falls after the end of most summer sessions but before the start of most fall
semestersbut, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. Although it would be easy to blame Texas
lawmakers for forgetting their state's history, the reality is that even those of us who spend our days
researching and writing about campus shootings didn't notice the connection until it was pointed out to
us. Months after the bill was passed, many of Texas' top journalists learned about the connection for the
first time. And in fairness to the Legislature, most people have enough trouble remembering their loved
ones' birthdays and wedding anniversaries, without trying to recall the date of every mass shooting (at
this point, it might be easier to remember the dates not associated with mass shootings).

Although the UT tower shooting holds a small place of significance for Students for Concealed Carryit
was the subject of our first op-edit's also a source of continuous frustration. Despite the fact that a
sniper firing from a fortified position high above the ground is not the type of scenario against which a
concealed handgun would be of much use and despite the fact that Texas license to carry (LTC) holders
are taught to move away from danger and avoid interfering with police, the 1966 shooting has become a
rallying cry for opponents of campus carry.

A form of revisionist history seeks to portray the armed citizens who used hunting rifles to pin down the
sniper that day as having done more harm than good. Such claims ignore the reports from that time and
the firsthand accounts of the people who were there.

In his 2005 autobiography They Call Me Ranger Ray, Ramiro Martinezone of two Austin police officers
credited with shooting and killing the lone gunman responsible for the UT tower shootingwrote:

I was and am still upset that more recognition has not been given to the citizens who pulled out
their hunting rifles and returned the sniper's fire. The City of Austin and the State of Texas
should be forever thankful and grateful to them because of the many lives they saved that day.
The sniper did a lot of damage when he could fire freely, but when the armed citizens began to
return fire the sniper had to take cover. He had to shoot out of the rainspouts and that limited
his targets. I am grateful to the citizens because they made my job easier.

In Pamela Colloff's 2006 Texas Monthly article "96 Minutes," Colloff quotes Bill Helmer, who was a UT-
Austin graduate student when he witnessed the shooting, as saying:

I remember thinking, All we need is a bunch of idiots running around with rifles. But
what they did turned out to be brilliant. Once he could no longer lean over the edge and
fire, he was much more limited in what he could do. He had to shoot through those
drain spouts, or he had to pop up real fast and then dive down again. Thats why he did
most of his damage in the first twenty minutes.

On July 26, 2016, the Texas Tribune published an article on Allen Crumthe armed citizen who helped
Ramiro Martinez and two other officers storm the tower observation deck from which the shooter was
firing. In the piece, journalist Matthew Watkins writes, "[Theres] no question that Crum and the other
vigilantes helped. In the days after the shooting, Austin Police Chief Bob Miles said their gunfire helped
pin Whitman down and likely limited the number of victims."

The circumstances under which these armed citizens responded were unique to that timea time when
Austin had no SWAT team or portable police radios and when keeping a hunting rifle in a dorm room
was both legal and socially acceptable. This incident in no way reflects how LTC holders, who are taught
that their handguns are for personal protection, not public protection, would or should respond to a
modern-day active shooter situation. Furthermore, there is no question that the riflemenboth average
citizens and law enforcementfiring from the ground created a hazard for the four brave responders
who finally reached the observation deck more than an hour and a half after the first shot rang out.
However, for anti-campus carry activists to attempt to further their agenda by retconning actions that,
according to the key players, saved lives is at best unconscionable and at worst deeply disrespectful.

Out of respect for the people impacted by the events of August 1, 1966, Students for Concealed Carry
does not plan to issue any public statements on August 1, 2016. We'll have many years to celebrate the
legalization of campus carry. For one day, Texas can focus on the seventeen lives lost and countless lives
affected by the tragedy fifty years ago.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 07/29/2016

A Short Reply to Ramiro Martinez, Regarding Campus Carry

AUSTIN, TX - In a recent interview with USA Today, Ramiro Martinez, one of the two police officers
credited with shooting and killing the perpetrator of the August 1, 1966, tower shooting at the
University of Texas at Austin, offered an unfounded criticism of campus carry. Journalist Rick Jervis
quotes Ramirez as saying, "[Campus carry is] going to open up a Pandoras box of problems in the
future...We now have well-trained police departments to cope with these problems. Someone running
around trying to be a hero will only complicate things."

It's worth noting that, during his 31 years as a Texas police officer, Martinez never dealt with licensed
concealed carry or concealed handgun license holders. He retired in 1991, five years before Texas'
concealed handgun licensing law took effect. When the Texas Legislature debated the law in 1995, it
was widely opposed by law enforcement; however, those attitudes soon changed, both in Texas and
across the nation.

A 2013 poll of almost 13,000 current and retired U.S. police officers found more than 91% in favor of
concealed carry. Those officers understand that license holders are significantly less likely to commit a
violent crime (or a crime of any kind) and pose much less threat to the safety of police than do
unlicensed citizens.

Two years after Texas' concealed handgun licensing law took effect, Glenn White, then president of the
Dallas Police Association, told The Dallas Morning News, "I lobbied against the law in 1993 and 1995
because I thought it would lead to wholesale armed conflict. That hasn't happened. All the horror stories
I thought would come to pass didn't happen. No bogeyman. I think it's worked out well, and that says
good things about the citizens who have permits. I'm a convert."

Unfortunately, Ramiro Martinez, who heaped praise on the armed citizens who pinned down the UT
tower shooter, never had a chance to become a convert, because he never had the pleasure of
interactingin a law enforcement capacitywith Texas concealed handgun license (CHL)/license to
carry (LTC) holders. If he had, he'd understand that license holders are preemptedby their training, by
an innate sense of self-preservation, and by laws requiring license holders on college campuses to keep
their handguns concealed unless and until they encounter an immediate threatfrom "running around
trying to be a hero."
Antonia Okafor, Southwest regional director for Students for Concealed Carry, commented, "The people
of Texas and the University of Texas will always owe Mr. Martinez a debt of gratitude for his heroic
actions on August 1, 1966, but his views on campus carry are rooted in ideas that are a quarter-century
out of date."

###

ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) is a national, non-
partisan, grassroots organization comprising college students, faculty, staff, and concerned citizens who
believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of
personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCC is
not affiliated with the NRA or any other organization. For more information on SCC, visit
ConcealedCampus.org or Facebook.com/ConcealedCampus. For more information on the debate over
campus carry in Texas, visit WhyCampusCarry.com or tweet @CampusCarry.

RELATED:

"A Refresher on the Case for Campus Carry in Texas": http://concealedcampus.org/2016/05/a-refresher-

on-the-case-for-campus-carry-in-texas/

SCCs Oct. 2, 2015 Feb. 20, 2017, Texas press releases and op-eds:
https://www.scribd.com/document/319141232/Texas-Students-for-Concealed-Carry-Campus-Carry-
Press-Releases-Op-Eds-Oct-2-2015-Feb-20-2017

SCC's 2015 Texas legislative handout (includes Dec. 9 - May 22, 2015, press releases and op-eds):
https://www.scribd.com/document/255815743/SCC-s-2015-Texas-Legislative-Handout

All SCC statements regarding the campus carry policies proposed by UT-Austin:
https://www.scribd.com/document/317821607/Texas-Students-for-Concealed-Carry-Press-Releases-
Regarding-UT-Austin-s-Campus-Carry-Policies

RECENT NEWS ARTICLES ABOUT CAMPUS CARRY IN TEXAS:

"Campus carry unrest fades in Texas" - The Houston Chronicle - Feb. 18, 2017

"WT transitions smoothly to first semester of campus carry" - Amarillo Globe-News - Dec. 19, 2016

"No gun related incidents reported at UTEP since SB11 went into effect" - KFOX 14 - Oct. 24, 2016

"Midwestern State encouraged by early results of campus carry policy" - KAUZ - Oct. 19, 2016

"Campus carry off to quiet start" - Denton Record-Chronicle - Oct. 15, 2016

"The Beginning of Campus Carry: As a Texas student affected by the law, I never wouldve imagined how
much my opinion has changed" - Study Breaks - Sept. 21, 2016