Only took them 49 years and no reason to come up with a campus-carry law.
Over
170 faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin have signed a petition refusing to allow guns in their classrooms. It is an act of opposition against Governor Greg Abbott's recently signed campus-carry law that allows gun owners the right to bring concealed weapons
onto campus and into dormitories.
The so-called campus-carry bill is expected to be signed into law by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott. It would take effect in August 2016 at universities and August 2017 at community colleges.
Supporters say it will make college campuses safer by not preventing licensed gun owners from defending themselves and possibly saving lives should a mass shooting occur, such as the one that unfolded at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
You may be familiar with Governor Greg Abbott from such hits as protecting Texas from
Obama's Jade Helm conspiracy or when he folded on a much needed mental health initiative because of
pressures from Scientology and anti-vaxxers.
The list, which started October 1 with 150 names, is growing.
History professor Joan Neuberger co-organized the list as part of anti-campus carry group Gun-Free UT’s efforts to state their opposition to the policy, which will take effect in August 2016.
“If people feel there might be a gun in the classroom, students have said that it makes them feel like they would be much more hesitant to raise controversial issues, and I know, as a professor, I would be hesitant to encourage students to debate really important and controversial ideas,” Neuberger said. “The classroom is a very special place, and it needs to be a safe place, and that means safe from guns.”
According to Neuberger, the list demonstrates to the campus carry working group that there is faculty opposition of the policy. Gun-Free UT has garnered more than 1,900 signatures through a change.org petition and is holding a rally on Oct. 1.
Professor Neuberger was inspired by University of El Paso (UTEP)
professor David Smith-Soto:
A University of Texas at El Paso professor has hung a "no-guns" sign outside of his classroom, saying he opposes the recently-signed campus carry law and hopes it never goes into effect.
"The minute that the governor signed that legislation, I put up my sign outside the door," David Smith-Soto, a senior lecturer of multimedia journalism at UTEP, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Guns belong wherever they belong, but they don't belong in my classroom — or anybody's classroom, for that matter."
Famously, one of the first mass shootings on a college campus was at UT back on
August 1, 1966. That was when Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old ex-Marine who had just killed his family, took an arsenal of guns to the University of Texas at Austin and killed 16 people before being killed. That was 49 years ago. This law goes into effect on the 50th anniversary. If every student and faculty member had been "packing" that terrible day in 1966, do you know how many lives would have been saved? None.
Any laws that promote the ideology that the threat of violence can end violence are laws created and supported by small and scared people.