AUSTIN, TEXAS — University of Texas officials are still deciding how they plan on implementing the recent legislative changes granting law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed on public campuses. The measure was passed recently and the governor of Texas has granted university administrators time to determine how they want to make it happen.
This has created some surprising rifts in the university systems.
via LA Times
Christina Adams, 54, recalled selling “Gun Free UT” T-shirts on parents weekend when chancellor of the eight-campus University of Texas system, William H. McRaven approached.
“He came up to us and talked to us and said we were doing the right thing,” said Adams, whose husband is a professor at the university and whose eldest son is a freshman. “We know McRaven is on our side. I don’t know how tied his hands are. The fact is, he will take into account the recommendations of the president of each campus.”
Even as campus carry organizations are poised to accept the new law hook, line, and sinker, there’s a staunch and well-publicized movement of students and faculty who are adamantly opposed to the right to defend themselves.
“Having guns on campus is an extremely bad idea. It’s an encroachment on academic freedom,” and a danger to students at risk of suicide, Max Snodderly, a neuroscience professor, said in an interview. “The president has a great deal of discretion in terms of areas that can be designed as gun-free on campus,” he said. “We are urging the president to implement gun-free zones in classrooms, dormitories and offices.”
Academic freedom. What does that actually mean? Which amendment in the United States Constitution guarantees academic freedom? There’s the First Amendment which guarantees the right to free speech and assembly. So, you’re given the right to voice your opinion, assemble, and issue grievances for redress from your government.
Is this the right to conduct academic pursuits free from any tangible threat? Does the idea of a law-abiding citizen carrying a gun on campus keep this professor shaking with fear?
Let’s speed this one up.
A person exercising his constitutional right to protect himself is not interfering with anyone else’s academic freedom. The two are unrelated.
A student’s ability to study, a professor’s ability to instruct or conduct research or meet with students and faculty is not impeded in any way that it wasn’t already. A bad guy with a gun is still a bad guy with a gun. Now, Texas is poised to allow good guys as well.
People really need to grow up — especially academia. This cowered, whimpering plea to ban all guns is not based in any logic or reason. The world does not cooperate with you just because you blubber harder. Guns don’t simply vanish. Bad people don’t go away just because you create “gun free zones”.