“I’m a guy that loves my guns,” Admiral McRaven said. “I have all sorts of guns. I just don’t think bringing guns on campus is going to make us any safer. If you’ve ever been shot at, which I have, then you have an appreciation for what a gun can do.”

Image Adm. William H. McRaven, the chancellor of the University of Texas System, is an opponent of the campus-carry bill. Credit... Marsha Miller/The University of Texas at Austin , via Associated Press

In addition to the campus-carry bill, Republican lawmakers also approved an open-carry bill, which gives those licensed to have a concealed weapon the option of carrying it openly in a holster, although open carry will not be allowed on a college campus. The debate over both bills made gun rights a dominant issue of the legislative session.

One of the bill’s chief architects was Senator Brian Birdwell, a Republican and a retired Army lieutenant colonel wounded in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon. Those backing it included local and national gun rights groups, including Students for Concealed Carry and the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association; Tea Party activists; and Sheriff Parnell McNamara of McLennan County, which includes Waco. Other law enforcement officials testified against the bill, including Adrian Garcia, who at the time was the sheriff of Harris County, which includes Houston.

Supporters said that because Texans licensed to have concealed firearms must be 21 years or older, the number of the state’s 850,000 license holders who will ultimately carry on campus will be small, and will most likely be older community college students more interested in protecting themselves as they walk to their cars at night on campus than in carrying their weapons to a fraternity party.

“An armed society is a safe society, so any time you have gun control, there is far more opportunity to become victims,” said State Representative Jonathan Stickland, a Republican and Tea Party favorite who often does his legislative work at the Capitol wearing his concealed .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol. “The criminals aren’t going to obey the laws. It’s the responsible folks who we should be encouraging to protect themselves in the community they live in.”

At the University of Texas at Austin, interviews with more than a dozen students Tuesday found little support for campus carry. The university was the scene of the nation’s first campus mass shooting on Aug. 1, 1966, when a sniper, Charles Whitman, fired at people from the school’s clock tower in a day of violence that left 16 people dead. The campus-carry law will take effect there Aug. 1, 2016, exactly 50 years later.

“I don’t think guns should be allowed, because that’s pretty scary,” said Sarah Wang, 18, a computer science major and sophomore who stood near the tower. “We’ve already seen so many instances where people get hurt because there are guns in schools.”