Knee-jerk reactionary politics and purposefully appealing to the populists’ baser desires is a favorite pasttime for narrow-minded, right-wing conservatives. Devoid of imagination, innovative ideas, solutions and gumption, people of Sen. Jeff Wentworth’s ilk reflexively aim for the darker impulses of the human spirit.
No other explanation could rationalize why an elected official, who supposedly possess all of his faculties, would suggest that young adults carry concealed firearms onto college campuses and into the classroom for their alleged protection. That’s just what Wentworth, R-Texas, proposed in a hotly-contested piece of ridiculous legislation. He wants Texas college kids to pack heat.
“Ninety-eight percent of people in Texas don’t have concealed handgun licenses, and the ones that do are of the most law-abiding members of society,” said Wentworth managed to gurgle up. “This bill is designed to give somebody the ability to defend themselves if a deranged person who is both suicidal and mentally unbalanced comes into the classroom — which has happened.”
Thankfully, someone handcuffed Wentworth. He had to withdraw the legislation from the statehouse floor when it failed to mobilize the two-thirds majority necessary for discussion. Two senators, Sen. Eddie Lucio (D-Brownsville) and Sen. Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville), had previously agreed to support the bill, but withdrew their support in order to consider amendments.
Check this out: Officials at the Alamo Colleges, a string of community colleges around San Antonio, were particularly outspoken because an employee of one of the schools, North East Lake View, was shot and killed in 2008 by another employee who had a concealed handgun license. An argument went south and a bloodbath ensued. If the killer was forced to go to his car to get his gun, there is a chance someone would still be alive today as cooler heads might have had a chance to prevail. In Texas, the legislation has been particularly unpopular on college campuses, and dozens of university presidents, including the University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, have come out against the bill.
“This isn’t about campus safety; it’s an ideological agenda,” said anti-gun advocate John Woods, whose girlfriend was slaughtered during the Virginia Tech tragedy, the single-deadliest campus rampage ever recorded. “These are people who are saying you should have a gun to protect yourself because we don’t know who else we gave the guns to.”
If you don’t pass out guns like a blunt, then people won’t have to worry about who they piss off. –terry shropshire
