Texas may soon allow guns on college campuses

AP via chron.com ^ | 2/20/11 | JIM VERTUNO

[FTJM]

Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he's in favor of the idea.

Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its gun culture and its size, with 38 public universities and more than 500,000 students. It would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and several have allowed handguns.

Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back.

"It's strictly a matter of self-defense," said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. "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."

Until the Virginia Tech incident, the worst college shooting in U.S. history occurred at the University of Texas, when sniper Charles Whitman went to the top of the administration tower in 1966 and killed 16 people and wounded dozens. Last September, a University of Texas student fired several shots from an assault rifle before killing himself.

[TXConservative25]

After this, maybe we can pass a law allowing open carry.

[WKTimpco]

Thank you, God, for conservative
states that show us the way.

Thank you, God, for our (still)
federalist system that exposes
the better way to do things
in states like Texas.

Please, God, expose the evil
that liberals want to do to
this blessed land by juxtaposing
fiscally and morally bankrupt
states like California with
God-fearing states like Texas!

[flat]

Well this'll blow up in all their faces....look at all the blood baths that have takin places where there are huge concentrations of firearms....i.e. GUN SHOWS for cryin out loud....

[maine yankee]

Texas may soon allow guns on college campuses

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“Texas finally reads the Constitution”