Licensed gun owners can now bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state psychiatric hospitals.
Before the state's new open carry law went into effect, guns were banned at those state facilities. No one — visitors, deliverymen and the like — could bring firearms anywhere on campus. Even local law enforcement officers, who were already allowed to bring their weapons into the facilities, regularly lock up their guns before entering Austin State Hospital out of an abundance of caution.
Now visitors can bring guns into the buildings where patients live. Employees are still prohibited from bringing them on campus.
“Good God,” said Rep. Celia Israel, D-Austin, who opposed open carry.
Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, who supports the new law, said he doesn’t have a problem with legally obtained and licensed guns in the hospitals.
“It's the responsibility of the operators of the facilities to ensure that the patients are not around dangerous weapons,” he said.
This week, the Austin hospital pulled down its signs banning guns. The hospital is hanging new ones asking people to leave their firearms safely in their cars or to conceal them at the Guadalupe St. hospital, said Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health, which runs the 10 state-run mental health hospitals.
“While licensed visitors are legally permitted to carry on our hospital campuses, our patients are being actively treated for psychiatric conditions and generally it’s best not to expose them to weapons of any kind,” Williams said.
The law, which legislators passed this spring, allows Texans with a gun license to legally carry firearms in a belt or a holster without concealing them starting Jan. 1. Supporters say it will enhance public safety, though studies they have cited fall short of proving that to be a fact. Opponents maintain that it will create an atmosphere of intimidation.
Beth Mitchell with Disability Rights Texas — a federally funded organization that advocates for people with mental illness — says allowing people to bring guns on campus “makes no sense.”
“I don’t know who concocted this idea, who thought this would be a rational policy for the State of Texas,” she said. “It’s only going to going to create fear among the patients themselves.”
Alcohol and tobacco are still banned from campus.
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