On June 1, 2015, Governor Greg Abbott signed the "campus carry" law which will allow licensed gun owners to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. Campus carry will go into effect on August 1, 2016, leaving college student in Texas with one more semester of peace of mind in the classroom. This year has brought us unfortunate violent crimes on school campuses, which leads many pro-gun activists to suggested that both the students and teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. The Constitution of The United States of America grants citizens the right to carry guns, but I firmly believe that a college campus or any learning environment is not a place to exercise this right.
All most all college campus has its own police force, including Austin Community College, that carry handguns for an emergency. This leads me to ask the question of why do we need more people, who could be potentially not even be properly trained to fire a weapon, be allowed to carry a gun on campus? Let's say you are experienced with a gun and there seems to be shooting on campus, you pull out your weapon and run towards the shooter after the seconds before the police arrive. You are now in a standoff with the shooter and the police arrive, not knowing who the wrongdoer is, the police shoot the wrong person. This compelling argument that a agree with was made in on the Austin-American Statesman. I believe we should leave the incident to the people who are trained, like a police officer or a member of the swat team, to handle the situation.
Imagine there is a heated debate in your government over immigration, welfare, or even gun control, and a classmate gets so offended that they pull out a handgun and shoots a someone over their different views.
