Supporting the Second Amendment has become the trendy, new movement for students nationwide.

Hundreds of scholars at one Texas university are petitioning their state for the right to concealed carry. Scott Greer of the Campus Reform has a report:

More than 600 students at Baylor University signed a petition in support of a Texas bill that would grant students the right to concealed carry on the state’s college campuses.

The petition was sponsored by the Young Conservatives of Baylor and was circulated over the course of a week in late February.The students delivered the petition to state Sen. Brian Birdwell (R), who authored the Senate Campus Concealed bill on Thursday, as a sign of support for the bill.

Brandon Waltens, who is the chairman of the Young Conservatives of Baylor, said the petition was created in response to a petition circulated among faculty that was against the Campus Concealed bill.

“We felt that if those professors were going to make such a statement, and they made a big brouhaha out of it…we had to let them know that, in fact, students, constituents and many professors support it,” Waltens commented.

Waltens said the majority of students who were asked to sign the petition supported the initiative.  He speculated the wave of support on campus was due to the recent mass shootings and the high level of crime in Waco, which is the hometown of Baylor.

“Campuses, like Baylor, are not in the safest places and every year there’s a number of physical and sexual attacks either on campus and are just off campus at Baylor,” Waltens said.

Waco has a violent crime rate of 837 incidents per 100,000 people, which is significantly higher than both the state of Texas and national average for violent crime.

Waltens added that “students should be able to defend themselves in those situations.”

The Campus Concealed Carry Bill is the top priority of Waltens’ state group, the Young Conservatives of Texas, and the bill is up in both the Texas State Senate and House.