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from the protect-yourself-'cuz-no-one-else-will dept.
Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Concealed handgun license holders in Texas can carry their weapons into public university buildings, classrooms and dorms starting Monday, a day that also marks 50 years after the mass shooting at the University of Texas' landmark clock tower.
The campus-carry law pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican legislative majority makes Texas one of a handful of states guaranteeing the right to carry concealed handguns on campus.
Texas has allowed concealed handguns in public for 20 years. Gun rights advocates consider it an important protection, given the constitutional right to bear arms, as well as a key self-defense measure in cases of campus violence, such as the 1966 UT shootings and the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech.
Opponents of the law fear it will chill free speech on campus and lead to more campus suicide. The former dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture left for a position at the University of Pennsylvania because of his opposition to allowing guns on campus.
Officials told the Austin American-Statesman it was a coincidence that the law took effect 50 years to the day after the UT shooting. Marine-trained sniper Charles Whitman climbed to the observation deck of the 27-story clock tower in the heart of UT's flagship Austin campus, armed with rifles, pistols and a sawed-off shotgun on Aug. 1, 1966, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others before officers gunned him down.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Monday August 08 2016, @04:48AM
Honestly, the gun debates are trite. Everyone reads from the same script, no one is convinced of much of anything, and it concentrates on the thing rather than the idea- what rights should you have towards self-protection?
Put it in that context, and this becomes a very different debate.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 08 2016, @12:18PM
Honestly, the gun debates are trite. Everyone reads from the same script, no one is convinced of much of anything
OK I'll bite and throw in some possibly interesting possibly unique ideas
1) Plenty of gun clubs in the civilian world and competitive shooting and all that. Not seeing a problem with students in dorms having a school marksmanship club and the law making life enormously simpler for them WRT going to and from the dorm and the on campus ROTC range or to and from any range.
2) Speaking of ROTC I was never in but surely there's some kind of benefit somehow? I went to a school with an on campus range, I would guess they did the unit armory thing like my reserve unit did and had a bank safe door and annoying security system and weapons racks adjacent to the range. Probably. But now a guy "we" trust to carry and shoot a govt issued 9mm, can carry a privately owned 9mm to and from pistol practice if he wants with less police problems. Even if he's not in a formal marksmanship club. WRT the students I knew in ROTC it seemed to be more of a PT club and social club anyway, but I'm sure some marksman would benefit.
3) The humorous assumption is your stereotypical frat bro will spend $200 of weed / beer money on a class and then $500 on a pistol and $$$$ on ammo because they don't like weed/beer as much as they like a .45. Which sounds idiotic having been 19 yrs old once. FAR FAR FAR more likely the instructors will be at the financial and lifestyle stage of life where they'll be the ones carrying. An infinite number of historical news reports indicates that carrying has no correlation with social signalling about gun control or politics in general, so even the leftie SJW gun control profs will carry. Honestly if the "police science" profs aren't carrying at least occasionally for training/educational purposes I'd wonder WTF is wrong with them. In summary most of the people carrying are going to be PHD level professors and administrators and admittedly a hell of a lot of staff. Not kids. As if there's anything wrong with giving a 19 year old kid a M-16 and dumping him in Vietnam or Afghanistan anyway. If there were a problem which there isn't, then it wouldn't matter anyway because the people carrying are going to have titles like "Dean of Diversity Studies Department" not "Freshman".
4) I wonder how this will interact with hunting seasons. I live in an area with extremely rural state U system and extreme amounts of recreational outdoor hunting and the two problems you're going to have are students hunting too close to the uni (just because there's a cornfield across the street doesn't mean its legal to hunt there) and kids missing class and missing study time because they'd rather spend 3 hours hunting in the morning because they have their rifle in their dorm (which is very common today) and the police are not going to F with them if they carry their rifle and CC-permit around campus or to class. Also students are going to do things like take their hunting rifle to SJW class before heading out after lunch to hunt and that will trigger the F out of people with weapons phobias, like bringing a noose to black studies classes. So I predict wild freakouts during hunting season by people suffering from mental illnesses about guns. "omg omg he's going to shoot bambi I have to cry for the next 16 hours now" Basically college students as a group are wimps and are not going to tolerate this as well as the general population, they're defective on a group average level compared to normal people.