SCCC: Anti-Campus Carry Professors Take a Decidedly Unacademic Approach to Activism

AUSTIN, TX – For a group ostensibly founded and run by professional researchers, Gun Free UT makes numerous claims that wouldn’t pass peer review. While much of the organization’s literature and talking points are just plain ridiculous—for example, a statement from the Warfield Center for African and African American studies, declaring, “[W]e demand that firearms be banned in all spaces occupied by Black people on our campus”—others are factually and statistically indefensible.

There is no disputing the fact that Texas concealed handgun license (CHL) holders are convicted of violent crimes at approximately 1/5 the rate of the general population. However, Gun Free UT claims, “Conviction rates are unreliable, because CHL holders tend to escape prosecution.” The group’s only source for this claim is a link to an article titled “Why Americans Don’t Treat Fatal Gun Negligence as a Crime”—an article that neither explicitly nor implicitly makes the claim in question. Instead, the article is about America’s reluctance to convict individuals responsible for fatal gun accidents. Nothing in the article suggests that America’s unwillingness to convict for negligent shooting deaths is more applicable to CHL holders than to the general population; therefore, Gun Free UT’s claim is completely without merit.

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