This ought to be unbelievable, but it appears to be all too real:
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....
Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses [of which there is almost none], 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....
Similar firearms measures have been proposed in about a dozen other states, but all face strong opposition, especially from college leaders. In Oklahoma, all 25 public college and university presidents declared their opposition to a concealed carry proposal.
"There is no scenario where allowing concealed weapons on college campuses will do anything other than create a more dangerous environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors," Oklahoma Chancellor of Higher Education Glen Johnson said in January. [This is obvious, but not to Senator Adolf Wentworth]
University of Texas President William Powers has opposed concealed handguns on campus, saying the mix of students, guns and campus parties is too volatile....
I'm sure this strikes my non-US readers as breathtaking: after all, who could believe that "adults" in the legislature would want college students to be armed with weapons? But Texas is the breeding ground for everything that is wrong with America. As someone who spents 13 very happy years in Austin--which is near Texas, alas, but tries to be its own civilized world--permit me to note that Senator Wentworth is the same neanderthal-enemy-of-the-Enlightenment who also championed the "moment of silence" law in the public schools as a way of bringing prayer back. My heart goes out to my friends in Austin, but I think this insanity, if it comes to pass, really represents the end of the University of Texas as a serious university system. I can't imagine anyone with a choice staying. What a tragedy.
UDPATE: Roger Albin, from the University of Michigan Medical School, points out this pertinent scholarly article from the British Medical Journal:
The myopic parochialism of US debate on gun control astonishes many who live overseas. The population of the US is 14.4 times that of Australia; the US has 141 times as many deaths from firearms as Australia (31 224 in 2007 v 221 in 2008) and 238 times Australia’s firearm homicide or manslaughter rate (12 632 in 2007 v 53 in 2008). In 1996, our government introduced massively supported gun laws that banned citizens’ access to semi-automatic rifles and pump action shot guns; a temporary tax levy funded the buyback of the banned guns. In the 18 years before the gun law reforms, there were 13 mass shootings (five or more people killed) in Australia. In the 14.6 years since, there have been none.
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