Let's keep guns out of college campuses

“Move out, move out there is a shooter in the building” These were the words I heard on September 28^th of last year when I was trying to study for my calculus test that morning in PCL. Police officers were storming into the building as I was getting evacuated toward the north side of the UT campus. On those moments, the last thing I wanted was my calculus classmate who can barely do an integral to pull out his hand gun and start shooting at the gunman who had an AK-47 assault rifle. Thanks to the current law, that didn’t happen and without any interruption police officers were able to do their job in the best possible manner. Unfortunately, that might change very soon.

In this editorial by the Dallas Morning News on February 25^th ( Texas lawmakers’ guns-on-campus bills still a bad idea) , the author describes how a proposed legislation bill can introduce a risk factor into an already higher-risk age group. This legislation (SB 354) proposed by Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio has a pending status in committee but it is expected to pass since republicans hold the majority in both the House and the Senate. If passed, this bill will allow the holder of a concealed-handgun permit to carry a concealed weapon “on or about the license holder’s person” while on a college campus. I would agree with this editorial and I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that our law makers waste their precious time that could be spent to find a solution to the budget crisis in Texas over legislating and proposing such a bill. As we all know, college students tend to attack their daily conflicts more aggressive than others due to their age group. The last thing that we would want them to have during their conflicts in the stressful college atmosphere is a concealed weapon. Normal fights between two classmates could go deadly and a simple fight could become a self defense scenario with the use of a concealed gun. I remember on the shooting day that I was so scared that I couldn’t even walk on a straight line and the idea that I would be able to shoot the gunman accurately and cause no worse harm is completely unreasonable.