Salon: ‘Hard-Line Right-Wing’ Texas Gov. Frightening Professors with Campus Carry

Feb. 23^rd, Salon magazine reported on an “unofficial forum” at the University of Houston in which professors discussed how to prevent angering students in light of the campus carry law signed by “hard-line right-wing” Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R).

Salon quoted the Houston Chronicle report that forum organizers suggested, “faculty members may want to avoid sensitive subjects or drop certain topics from their curriculum altogether.”

A slideshow viewed at the forum suggested faculty members need to be ready to not “go there'” if they sense anger on the part of students, and they may also want to “limit student access off hours” for their own protection.

Salon notes, “Hard-line right-wing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the ‘campus carry’ Senate Bill No. 11 into law in June 2015. It will go into effect in August 2016. The legislation does not allow public university governments to ban weapons.”

They also noted that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently issued an “opinion [stipulating] that guns have to be allowed in classrooms or dorms, though the University of Texas at Austin says it will permit students to carry weapons in the former, but not the latter.”

The University of Houston has launched “a 15-member Campus Carry Work Group comprised of representatives throughout various University departments and groups with the responsibility to develop a campus carry policy that is compliant with the new campus carry law.”

In the interim, Salon points to a 2015 Houston faculty resolution opposing campus carry. That resolution says, “Weapons designed to end human life have no place in the academic life of the university.”

Lost in this hyperbole is the fact that students with concealed permits are law-abiding citizens who have gone through a permitting process and a thorough background check to carry a gun. They do not carry guns to “end human life” but to defend it. And if the need for such defense arises, they will not simply be protecting their own lives, but the lives of professors who currently oppose campus carry as well.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.