Legislator seeks to keep guns out of state psychiatric hospitals
One year after state psychiatric hospitals began letting people carry guns on campus, a Republican legislator is pushing a bill that reverses course.
House Bill 14, filed by Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, outlaws firearms at Texas’ 10 state-run mental health hospitals, which care for people with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other illnesses.
“No one wants a gun to fall into the hands of a mentally ill patient who could pose a danger to himself or herself, fellow patients, visitors or staff,” Murr said.
For decades, the Department of State Health Services had banned guns at the psychiatric hospitals. No one — visitors, delivery people and such — could bring firearms anywhere on hospital property. Even local law enforcement officers, who were permitted to bring their weapons into the facilities, regularly locked up their guns before entering hospitals out of an abundance of caution.
Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/legislator-seeks-keep-guns-out-state-psychiatric-hospitals/zZ3B73IyazvB3kZfXmDPTL/
