RICHMOND, Va. (April 7, 2009)--Two Texas colleges have received the dubious Jefferson Muzzle Awards for banning gun-related speech.

Lone Star College-Tomball, of Tomball, was cited for refusing to allow a conservative student group to distribute a flier with "Top Ten Gun Safety Tips" that included "Always keep your gun pointed in a safe direction, such as at a Hippy or Communist," and Tarrant County College, of Fort Worth, got its Muzzle for barring students from wearing empty gun holsters in protest against a campus ban on concealed weapons.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression says the Democratic and Republican parties also earned Muzzle Awards for going along with "free-speech zones" set up by local authorities at last summer's conventions.

Those zones limited protesters to areas often out of view from convention delegates.

Commanders at Camp Lejeune Marine Base also got a Muzzle Award for requiring a civilian worker to remove stickers that read "Islam Terrorism" and "Remember the Cole, 12 Oct. 2000" from his car.

The man's son died in the Cole bombing.

Millard South High School in Omaha, Neb., which suspended 23 students for wearing T-shirts with the message "R-I-P Julius" to memorialize a friend who'd been shot to death, received the award.

School administrators claimed the shirts were gang-related.