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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: 4, Informative) by Walzmyn on Sunday August 07 2016, @10:08PM
As a graduate of a college in the South, I can tell you firearms are already carried concealed on campus. It's good to be making it legal.
I wish our pansy governor here wouldn't have overturned our law. Not sure about the Texas law, but the Georgia one would have only allowed 21 year olds with CCLs. There's already a plethora of laws 'stopping' people from carrying guns when consuming alcohol or if convicted of a felony so most of the hoop-la about kids on campus carrying drunk is just blather. It's already illegal, it will be after the law, if people do it now or then nothing will be changed.
And the legal history of people who go though the effort of getting a CCL is pretty damn good. Inappropriate use of a firearm is minuscule compare to population as a whole.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday August 07 2016, @10:15PM
Most people serious enough to go through the trouble and expense of getting a carry permit aren't going to do something that gets them a felony conviction and forgoes their gun rights forever.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Touché) by deadstick on Sunday August 07 2016, @11:41PM
the trouble and expense
My trouble and expense was half a day and fifty bucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 07 2016, @11:13PM
Why would college students only in the South need guns? Are they threatened by education? Are they insecure and scared to death so that they must have either medication, or a soothing hunk of metal that can spew hot death, if need be? Or are the involved in dangerous and illegal activities, blood feuds, or insurrection? Or it is all of the above? (Since this is a question to Southern College Students, it would have to be a multiple guess question!) Why do not college students elsewhere in the USA and the rest of the world have similar needs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08 2016, @12:12AM
Fear is a good motivator. Also, wanting to exercise their constitutional rights. Both are kinda silly in the day to day of a college campus, but I'm pretty sure those are why.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Walzmyn on Monday August 08 2016, @10:25AM
Who said anything about only in the South. Texas, from TFA, is in the South. I'm in the South. Never lived up North, don't want to, can't say anything about it. I just know that down here, they are already carrying them.
That's not only personal experience. I heard some Sheriff's being interviewed while our Governor was being a whinny who said they knew kids were carrying them and it wasn't something they were pursuing, because our campuses weren't having a problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08 2016, @04:57PM
Are they threatened by education?
Well, you are talking about the South! (*bad-da-bing*, I'm here all week...)
Although I'd have to admit I had some calculus and physics classes were I would have loved to take the book out and fill it full o' lead.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Monday August 08 2016, @06:37PM
Texas also has 21 as the minimum licensing age. (reference) [state.tx.us]
There's an exception in there for military types; if you're older than 18 and serving in the armed forces you can be licensed to carry in your civilian life. That may end up with a few students who are also members of the Texas National Guard carrying concealed on campus who otherwise wouldn't due to age.
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