Campus carry bill may have been stopped for good.

A measure to make it legal to carry concealed handguns in college classrooms may have been shot down for good late Thursday in the Texas House.

After the measure stalled repeatedly in the Senate, Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, finally succeeded in attaching the proposal as an amendment to a must-pass fiscal matters bill. When that bill reached the House late Thursday, Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, was ready with a point of order, a parliamentary tactic lawmakers frequently use to stall measures they oppose.

By correctly noting that the gun amendment was not pertinent to the rest of the bill, Villarreal knocked the entire bill back to the Senate, where the amendment will likely be stripped.



"Here's a novel idea. Let's give students financial aid instead of firearms," Villarreal said.

With just 10 days left in the session, several House members said they believe the measure is effectively dead.

"I hope that's not the case, but it's looking pretty bleak right now," said Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, one of the lead authors of the measure in the House.

It was the second time in two days that a proposal backed by nearly every Republican in the GOP-dominated Legislature was dealt an apparently fatal blow.

On Wednesday, a Senate panel opted against a ban on so-called sanctuary cities, which critics say provide haven to illegal immigrants across Texas. In both cases, the measures hit the rocks in the Senate where 21 of the 31 senators must agree to bring a bill up for debate.

Advocates say allowing guns on campus is about self-defense and gun rights.

Opponents, including many higher-education officials, worry that guns would lead to more campus violence and suicides.

Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said Republicans would still have a strong package of conservative successes to be proud of at the end of the session.

But losses on measures like "campus carry" are still disappointing, he said.

"This session has been so overwhelmed by the budget that a lot of things here probably slipped by that should have gone through," King said.

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