Texas is poised to approve a measure allowing college students and professors to carry guns on campus, an initiative with strong support in the state legislature that critics concede they probably can't stop.
The legislation has been championed by Gov. Rick Perry, co-sponsored by over half the lawmakers in the state House, and approved two years ago in the Senate. Texas would follow Utah, the only state in the nation to have a similar law.
"It's strictly a matter of self-defense," state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, a Republican, told The Associated Press. "I don't ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks."
The measure's supporters commonly argue that it would make campus shootings less likely, not more, wading into a key point of contention between opponents and proponents of looser gun laws.
College leaders across the nation have criticized the idea as dangerous, dismissing the view that a filling up the classrooms and dorm rooms with weapons would make inhabitants safer.
I'd dispute that allowing concealed carry on Texas college campuses would prevent another Virginia Tech incident. At the same time, hey, voters overwhelmingly approved Republicans at the state level in Texas, so this is the kind of legislation they feel is important to Texas right now. I have one good friend on a Texas college campus right now for grad school that most likely would agree wholeheartedly with Texas Republicans on this, but then again he's my age, married, and responsible and not 19 and stupid.
My personal view on concealed carry is, as with driving during snow and ice, all the other idiots out there who are going to get someone killed. We don't trust college kids with booze for a reason, and you want them packing on campus?
Not terribly fond of the idea, but then again, not my state, not my legislature.
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