By John Boch via TTAG
They screeched about shootouts in classrooms. They claimed their students cried at the thought of people with guns in lecture halls. “It’ll chill free speech!” they predicted, if the state allowed licensed students to carry guns on campus. They even sued to try to block the law.
And now, after two years of uneventful campus carry, three University of Texas-Austin professors have nothing to say about it.
It’s true. Instead of admitting that none of their their dire predictions have come to pass, three special snowflake educators are refusing to even talk about it. Professors Lisa Moore, Jennifer Glass and Mia Carter of UT-Austin stayed stum when asked about two years of campus carry, not to mention the conspicuous lack of blood on campus, stifled speech or blubbering students.
The Campus Fix reported on the profs’ reticence:
Professors who previously sued their university claiming campus concealed carry would have a chilling effect on free speech there will not comment on the effect that guns have had on campus life since the policy was instated.
Lisa Moore, Jennifer Glass and Mia Carter, three University of Texas at Austin professors, filed a lawsuit against the university in 2016 seeking to overturn the state’s campus carry law that permitted individuals to carry concealed weapons into public university buildings. The professors claimed the possibility of a gun being in their classrooms would violate their First Amendment rights, including that of academic freedom.
A district court eventually tossed out the lawsuit, with the judge asserting that the plaintiffs “[did] not specify a subject matter or point of view they feel they must eschew as a result of the Campus Carry Law and Campus Carry Policy, or point to a specific harm they have suffered or will suffer as a result of the law and policy.”
It could be worse. The three could be like the global warming acolytes who continually parrot their doomsday, sky-is-falling warnings even after their earlier predictions failed to pan out.
Though the professors predicted disastrous results from the campus concealed carry law, they were unwilling to speak about its effects on their campus.
Mia Carter did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email. Reached via email, Lisa Moore said: “I’m not able to help, I’m sorry,” without giving further explanation.
Asked about her experiences on the school’s campus over the past year, Jennifer Glass told The Fix that she had not done any undergraduate teaching this past year and was thus not able to comment. Glass did not answer followup questions regarding the campus climate and whether or not guns had had any effect on it over the past few years, inside or outside the classroom.
Three years ago, Professor Glass was a whole lot chattier about the prospect of licensed carry on the UT campus. She offered these remarks to the UK Telegraph:
‘We don’t know how many people will not apply for jobs here because of this,’ Glass says. ‘We don’t know how many students were admitted and won’t come because their parents are afraid to send them here. UT is a prominent, high-level, research-intensive university. These are very difficult to build and exceedingly easy to destroy.’
Professor Moore said some of her students began to bawl at the thought of someone with a gun sitting in the same very room with them. Because, you know, those guns might “go off.” All by themselves.
Again, from the UK Telegraph:
‘My students were looking at me with saucer eyes,’ Moore recalls. ‘Three of them started to cry. They all had questions. The awareness that that day in that class there may be someone who had a handgun sitting in the room with them was incredibly distracting. We didn’t talk much about Jane Austen that day.’
Despite the dark prognostications, though, the sky didn’t fall in Texas after the legislature allowed card-carrying good boys and girls to carry on the state’s campuses. Just as it continues not to fall in the other states that have allowed students to carry in their schools.
A dozen states permit concealed carry on campuses for students, but sadly they remain a minority. This is, in part, due to the Chicken Little predictions by those like Professors Moore, Glass and Carter who don’t vigorously support everyone’s right to self-defense. And don’t would rather spread fear than facts.
Each year, more states move to approve campus carry for students and staff.
Faster please.