Rick Jervis

USA TODAY

AUSTIN -- As of New Years Day, licensed gun owners in Texas have been allowed to openly carry firearms into restaurants, shops and zoos.

Add a new place to the gun-friendly list: state mental health hospitals.

Visitors to one of Texas' 10 state mental health hospitals will be allowed to openly carry weapons into the facilities, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Employees and patients will still be barred from bringing in weapons. The hospitals this week pulled down signs banning guns at its facilities and posted new ones asking people to leave their firearms in their cars or conceal them from patients, said Carrie Williams, a state health department spokeswoman.

“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 in statement.

The act stems from a pair of new laws, enacted this year, that allows Texans with a gun license to legally carry a holstered firearm without concealing it and bans state agencies from posting signs telling people they cannot carry guns on property. A separate law will allow licensed gun owners to carry firearms into public universities starting Aug. 1. Private businesses could choose whether to allow firearms on their premises.

The laws have sparked heated debate between supporters, who say the visible firearms could deter crime and mass shooters, and opponents who claim guns in eateries and college campuses upset otherwise peaceful environments. Businesses such as Target, Whole Foods and Whataburger have opted not to allow firearms on their Texas premises. Gun-rights advocates have threatened boycotts on businesses that don't allow guns.

Allowing firearms into state hospitals is likely to fuel the debate.

"It’s an absolutely terrible idea," said Beth Mitchell, a supervising attorney with Disability Rights Texas, an Austin-based advocacy group for persons with disabilities, including mental ailments. "You have a very vulnerable population committed to these facilities for treatment. Allowing visitors to walk around campus with visible firearms could be very scary to people. It's a very volatile situation."

The majority of the patients in the hospitals are civilly-committed -- not criminally -- so most of the facilities don't have armed security guards, though some do, said Mitchell, whose group monitors the state hospitals. Police officers entering the hospitals routinely do not bring in their firearms, she said.

State Rep. Matt Rinaldi, a Republican from Irving, voiced support of the new policy and said it's up to each hospital to keep the guns away from patients. “It's the responsibility of the operators of the facilities to ensure that the patients are not around dangerous weapons,” he told the Austin American-Statesman, who first reported the policy shift.

Patients at the hospitals suffer from a variety of ailments, ranging from depression and bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, Mitchell said. Many are veterans of overseas wars struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, she said. Introducing weapons could trigger their symptoms, she said.

"These institutions are supposed to be safe from weapons," Mitchell said. "Now we’re going to say, 'No one else can have them, but visitors are allowed to bring in weapons.' It makes no sense."