Pacific Standard
By James McWilliams
November 7, 2018
In late August a federal appeals court rejected a challenge to Texas' controversial campus carry law, the 2015 statute allowing gun owners with legal permits to bring their weapons to campus—and the classrooms—of public colleges and universities. Over the past two months, the decision has spawned a pro-gun editorial response ranging from college campus newspapers to the National Review, arguing that the law has been, from the outset, an effective one. In fact, these current responses more likely reflect a conservative effort from the outset to spin this law as safe, rather than any sort of empirical assessment.
The three University of Texas–Austin professors who filed the case did so on First Amendment grounds. Classroom discussion, they argued, would be "dampened to some degree" by concerns that a gun owner who was "moved to anger and impulsive action would open fire." The American Association of University Professors agreed, explaining in an accompanying brief how the presence of guns "compel faculty to alter their pedagogical choices, deprive them of the decision to exclude guns from their classrooms, and censor their protected speech."
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