AUSTIN - Conservative Texas lawmakers have spent the past six years chasing some form of legislation to allow guns on college campuses.

While they managed to pass a law last month allowing those with concealed handgun licenses to transport and store their licensed handgun in their vehicle on campus, students and employees are otherwise forbidden from bringing handguns on campus.

A little-known exception, however, allows schools to adopt policies to grant written authorization. Texas A&M University System, which includes 11 four-year universities, is the only system of the state's six that has a policy to allow members of its institutions to apply for an all-access pass to carry on campus.

More than 70 students, faculty and staff members have been granted special permission by Texas A&M universities to carry firearms since the policy was adopted in 2000, including about at least 60 at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, which granted authorization for students and faculty members to carry weapons in state vehicles and use for wildlife research.

Fred Bryant, executive director of Caesar Kleburg Wildlife Research Institute at TAMUK, said about a quarter of those involved in the program request the schools permission.

"All the collecting is done on private land, never on school property," Bryant said. "All the firearms are shotguns or rifles and they're strictly for research purposes..... Not for personal protection."

The system's largest school, Texas A&M University, has received only one application. A student requested permission to carry for personal protection in May and was denied, records show. West Texas A&M approved its only application for "varmint control at the rodeo arena," according to records.

Texas A&M-Texarkana approved all three of its requests, which were for students bringing Civil War-era guns to class for a project.

Five A&M campuses

Five A&M campuses including San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Commerce, Central Texas and Prairie View, reported no applicants.

Kevin Zuniga, an active Army lieutenant who graduated from Texas A&M International University in May, applied to carry on campus in March but never received a response. Zuniga is licensed by the Department of Public Safety to teach a concealed handgun license course and is the owner of Shetland Tactical in Laredo.

"Campus police were adamant that you had to demonstrate a real need to carry in order for them to approve it..... and that any approval is rare," he said.

Zuniga, 27, said he "had to do a lot of digging" to find the provision in the systems policy. He said campus police told him a female who worked late at night on campus would be likely to be approved. Zuniga has long been a proponent of allowing students with CHL's to carry in classrooms, he said.

The A&M system policy instructs an individual wishing to apply for authorization to carry a firearm on campus to submit a request form, which includes personal information, reason for request, time period and location for the authorization, the firearm's information including serial number and consent for a criminal history background check, to the individual's university police department, whose chief approves or denies the request.

Tarleton State University, about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth, has received five applications and approved them all. The school did not receive a request until 2012.

Different needs

Justin Williams, police chief for Tarleton State University who decides on the applications at Tarleton, said the policy allows different schools to serve different needs. Many of the Texas A&M University System schools are in agricultural areas, he said, where firearms are more necessary. All five approvals at the school were for faculty or staff, not students, he said.

"We are not going out and actively arming our faculty members," he said.

Two applications were from the same person and cited "burrowing pests" as the reason, one was for "personal protection", and another for "the ability to utilize force/deadly force to stop an aggressor" to avoid death or injury "of himself or a third party."

Types of firearms approved included a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and The Judge; a pistol that shoots .410 bore shot shells, records show.

University officials at other school systems, including the University of Texas System and the Texas State University System, have publicly opposed allowing guns in classrooms. Others have been wary of taking a stance on the polarizing issue.

Republican lawmakers in the past three legislative sessions have pushed measures that would allow all individuals with concealed handgun licenses to carry their weapon on campus, but have fallen short each session.