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 zocalo on Monday August 08 2016, @06:31AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 08 2016, @07:28AM
Either way, we now have a situation that will (and, sadly, it is almost certainly "will") eventually put the idea that people with a penchant for slaughter with a firearm pick soft targets to the test, don't we?
Probably not. It's a small sample size and mass shootings are very rare even in the US (though at a higher per capita rate than the rest of the developed world).
If that theory holds water then there will never, ever, be a mass shooting incident (I'm excluding suicides and "crimes of passion" because concealled carry or not, people will still bring a gun on campus for things like that) at one of the schools where concealled carry is permitted.
Why does that theory have to perfectly hold water? I think there's still the possibility of a mass shooting at a concealed carry school, if only because that's where the shooter's target or grievance is. Second, you are missing a second important effect. An armed person can intervene in an ongoing attack. That changes the behavior of the shooter. There's a fair number of mass shootings where the killing stopped once someone with a gun, including law enforcement, started shooting back, even in the situations where the shooter wasn't injured by the return fire.
Concealed carry at that point is an immediate deterrent (rather than merely the threat of one) to violent crimes including potential mass shootings.
Obviously it will need to be a proof by exception, which is hardly ideal, but how long do you think it's going to take - or are people *really* that confident?
We might see an effect that reaches statistical significance in a few decades. The whole situation is overblown.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08 2016, @10:11AM
Mass shootings are rare in the US. Getting a utility bill is also rare in the US apparently.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 08 2016, @01:56PM
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday August 08 2016, @10:44AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!