The Texas legislature passed a bill to allow college students, teachers, and employees to carry concealed weapons on school grounds. This is the solution found by Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, to the problem of the Virginia Tech massacre — fill campuses with firearms.
Wentworth insists that the lack of guns allowed students and faculty to be “picked off like sitting ducks.” Notably, the legislature prohibited the guns in university hospitals and athletic facilities.
Wentworth insists that “I would feel personally guilty if I woke up one morning and read that something similar had occurred on a Texas campus.” It appears that he will not feel quite so guilty with a dozen or so individual incidents of shootings in various schools around the state. This should make grade reviews interesting for teachers who can keep one hand on their testing sheets and one hand on their magnums.
There are eleven universities that currently allow handguns on campus.
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What about the 10% personal income tax and 8% sales tax?
GWLSM:
I forgot Napa and Yosimite and Lake Taho and well everywhere in the frigging state is great.
cough cough cough Napa cough cough
GWLSM:
having lived in CA myself, any state would be a hard act to follow. There is no better road than the Pacific Coast highway, and Monterey and Half Moon Bay and Carmel-nonpareil.
Matthew
YOu raise a good point about the vulnerability of college kids away from home for the first time. Isn’t that what Campus Crusade for Christ is all about? and other cults?
I lived in Texas, in Austin, for one year.
My husband was going a post-doc there and I spent my time trying to figure out why anyone would live there voluntarily.
It was an okay place, except for the bugs, the weather and the people. Austin is kind of scenic and for 2 weeks in the spring and 2 weeks in the fall you can be outdoors and enjoy the river and the parks and can play tennis or go jogging. The rest of the year its either bone chilling cold or 100 degrees with 90% humidity or dry and 110 with afternoon thunderstorms that can frighten you out of your shoes and flash floods.
We lived there after the Whitman massacre and the top deck of the tower at UT was closed off to the public but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out why he chose that site or the panic he created.
It doesn’t surprise me one single bit that Texans want to make concealed weapons on campus a reality. When I lived there, there was this drive thru liquor store called Party Barn. You could load up on as much beer as your vehicle would hold without getting out of the driver’s seat. There was no open container law and people talked about how many 6-packs to took to drive from Austin to Dallas, or to San Antonio or to Houston.
I could go on and on about how much I actually hated Texas and I was happiest there on my last day when we loaded up the cars and began the drive back to California.
Since then I’ve lived in a bunch of other states but the one place I’d never go back to is texas.
my son wants to attend school in texas. i will not allow that now.
I think its also worthwhile to weigh the fact that normal college age is the most common time for mental health problems to arrive. You have a bunch of kids away from home who may or may not have a stable support system and may or may not be willing to seek treatment. Then you basically ignore that and say that allowing students to carry guns on campus will prevent more VA Tech shootings. I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense to me. If I ever saw someone walking down the street carrying a gun (my state has concealed carry), I would probably feel really anxious. Police officers, regardless of how much I personally trust them, have been screened and trained to use their weapons. The concealed carry class is such a joke and people don’t have to submit to psych testing and whatnot. I feel like the presence of a concealed firearm (if I noticed it or suspected it) deprives me of the right to live free from unnecessary worry. Concealed carry by anyone without police/military makes the world a less safe place in my opinion.
Sorry, I don’t care if you’re a deer hunter for one week of the year. I doubt the capability of any average person to safely carry and effectively employ a firearm in any kind of dangerous situation. I was trained to fire handguns in the military and had to qualify every so often, but I still feel that me carrying around a firearm is a much bigger risk/liability than just recognizing that the chance of any armed conflict (which you could actually do anything about) is virtually zero. So in essence, all you are doing is carrying around a deadly weapon for no reason at all (other than to make you feel big and strong and to assuage your paranoid delusions).
When I was an undergraduate I worked for awhile as a ward clerk in the college infirmary. Exam period each semester was marked by an increase in the number of students admitted with a diagnosis of “anxiety reaction.” This new legislation will provide students with an alternative method of stress reduction that eliminates the dependency risks associated with medications. After all, it worked for Charles Whitman.
whoolie:
🙂 Terrific thanks!
“Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said the bill could confuse university police…” Could people who choose to carry handguns be identified by being required to wear ridiculously silly hats too?
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1195/1130536088_9a2f79e3ea.jpg
Buddha:
that was interesting. Big brother is alive and well. We need a new government, start new from the bottom up.
Are there even any people at the FCC that are saying WTF?
BobEsq is correct.
Sounds like a movie script to me. Here’s some prospective lines from “Magnum Cum Laude: Education Under Fire”:
“Go ahead with that torts exam professor — make my day.”
“Well you pointy headed academic punk, for my small group I want me and Smith and Wesson.”
“In all that confusion at the testing center, I can’t remember if I fired 6 shots or only 5. How do you feel today proctor? Lucky?”
Ah Texas where the men are men, and the women, well, they don’t want to procreate.
A little known fact…
The first testicular guard “Cup” was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974.
It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
Looks like Texas hasnt yet.
I was actually walking around campus of my school yesterday and I saw a newspaper talking about this issue. I thought to myself for a moment: would I feel safer if students could carry concealed weapons? Normally I am pretty pro-gun, but in this instance I completely disagree. First of all, I don’t trust anyone I don’t know with a firearm. The idea that I would have to constantly consider that everyone passing each other walking down the sidewalk or inside school buildings could possibly have a weapon makes me feel significantly LESS safe.
Texas was already the worst state in the union before this, so this just gives me more reason to never go there. I feel bad for students who now have to walk around fearful that everyone is carrying a pistol under their jacket.
OFF TOPIC: Big Brother
The FCC claims it has warrantless search powers under the Communications Act of 1934 (untested in the court).
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/fcc-raid/
Hey wait a minute there Buster. Don’t forget Oklahoma wants to make it Justifiable Homicide for killings by a pregnant woman. SO stop it right here. Trying to compare Texas with Arkansas. It was finally decided that if a man and woman moved to Texas from Arkansas and got divorced, they were still Brother and Sister
So don’t lump us all together. We make all look alike but we don’t all talk alike, ya here?
Only Kidding, well not about the talking part.
The Texans may be trying to keep up with the Joneses in Arkansas where a law to allow guns in church was a topic of discussion.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/02/pop-cap-for-jesus.html
whoolie,
preemptive smite.
rofl
UT Law’s moot court team will now be able to submit much more compelling arguments.
For sale: Bible holsters. Actual bibles with the pages cut out shaped to your weapon of choice.
Try our quick draw bible holster that allows you to grasp your weapon through the bible base in case things turn bad in study hall. For added peace of mind, we’ll thrown in our gideon adapter that lets you reload with ease.
And, introducing the two inch derringer model hidden in a cross necklace. Just touch any part of Jesus to launch a preemptive smite.
Testimonial: Thanks Bible holsters! I now have peace of mind when my children attend vacation bible skool in Texas!
LOL
Anybody remember Charles Whitman? Sniper, sitting duck, UT Austin, sound familiar? Make my day.