Would you feel safer if you were allowed to carry a gun on campus? Do you think it will prevent a mass shooting like what happened at Virginia Tech University? I’m happy to say that it could possibly save lives if some freak decides to attack a campus, and you do have a gun. Individuals who have a permit to carry know the rules and have taken gun safety classes to just get the permit. I could just see if a crazy individual decide to shoot up a campus in Texas after August 2016, when the new bill will take effect, and in August 2017 for community colleges.
Opponents say the notion that armed students would make a campus safer is an illusion that will have a chilling effect on campus life. Professors said they worry about inviting a student into their offices to talk about a failing grade if they think that student is armed. And Democratic lawmakers and some university leaders worry about increased security costs and the bill’s effect on recruiting potential teachers and students from other states.
“The perception in academia will be that Texas is a free-fire zone with yokels in the classrooms packing heat,” said Lynn W. Tatum, a professor at Baylor University in Waco and the former president of the Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors.
Texas will be one of eight states to allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public college campuses, joining Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nineteen others ban concealed weapons on campus, including California, Florida and New York, and 23 others, including Alabama and Arizona, leave the decision to the colleges or state board of regents.
The bill that passed in Texas was something of a compromise that allows private universities to opt out and public ones to designate parts of their campuses as gun-free zones. But coming at a time when legislatures have allowed guns at places from bars to houses of worship, it reflects the seemingly limitless legislative clout of gun interests, particularly in Republican-dominated states.