From the Amendment II Democrats blog on MySpace:
By now, many of you probably know that a Texas bill that would have permitted CHL holders to carry concealed handguns on state college campuses will not be heading to Governor Rick Perry's desk for signature.
So what killed the Texas campus-carry bill? The Austin American-Statesman names a very likely culprit: Voter ID.
Republican legislators in the Texas House of Representatives were so hell-bent on passing this repressive and useless "Voter ID" law that they scuttled their own time-honored rules of procedure just so they could keep Democrats from blocking a vote on the Voter ID bill. The result was a five-day filibuster on the House floor, courtesy of Democratic legislators, that stretched over Memorial Day weekend. When the dust settled, Voter ID was dead, but so were hundreds of other bills which were simply tossed aside by House Republicans in a vain effort to save Voter ID. One of those bills thrown on the funeral pyre was the campus concealed-carry bill, which had already passed the Texas Senate and was simply awaiting a vote in the House.
So how did the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence report this development out of Austin? Your humble Webmaster isn't making this up:
The Texas State Legislature said "no" to the gun lobby in the session just ended, joining a growing list of states that rejected forcing colleges and universities to allow students to bring loaded, hidden handguns to class...
"Common sense is alive and well in Texas," said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign. "State legislators in Texas agreed that places of learning don’t need armed college students, and that private property owners should set the rules on who can come onto their property packing."
Defeating these bills was the top priority of the Texas Brady Campaign chapters.
"We are very pleased that the gun lobby's two priorities for this session failed. Our lawmakers respected the strong opposition from the university community and also chose to protect business owners’ private property rights," said Marsha McCartney, President of the Texas Chapters of the Brady Campaign.
Uh - Paul? Marsha? How do you explain that the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 1164 (the campus concealed-carry bill) by a vote of 20-11? Or are you saying that the state legislature's own records of the vote are mistaken?
If Paul Helmke and Marsha McCartney want to celebrate the fact that Senate Bill 1164 never became law, they have every right to do so. But it hurts their cause if they do not accurately represent the reasons that SB 1164 died on the House floor in the first place. I'll leave it to you to decide if their observations on the campus concealed-carry bill are accurate.
From my vantage point, however, Helmke and McCartney are relying on typical Brady Campaign bluster. All I have to offer you, gentle reader, are the facts liberally sprinkled with more facts on top. And if Brady Campaign representatives want to challenge me on the death of Texas SB 1164, they're welcome to try.