Should Americans be allowed to carry their concealed weapons onto a public school campus, including into their classroom? That’s the issue at the heart of a debate between the State of Texas and campus professors at the University of Texas at Austin. While the ability to carry concealed (open carry is prohibited) has already been approved and enacted August 1st, some professors have sued to block the admittance of guns into their specific classrooms.

As former and current military, many of us on SOFREP likely encourage carrying our guns anywhere we can. We’ve seen real threats, and wouldn’t want to face them without our piece. It’s been my experience that legal gun owners, and especially those that continue their firearm education with classes to gain a concealed license, are added threat-deterrents to the community, not instigators. It takes a lot of responsibility to maintain your weapon, choose appropriate clothing everyday to properly conceal your handgun, remain on the lookout for the dreaded “no gun”, or 30.06 signs, and stay vigilant for threats. In addition, you have to stay current on situations like this one at UT, stay out of trouble with the law, and know when, where, and how you can legally protect yourself or another with the use of a firearm.

As has been mentioned countless times, advertising gun-free zones is an invitation for those wishing to do harm. I mean, if you were a terrorist, would you now target a UT classroom, knowing full well that any given auditorium could hold as many as 500 guns? You’d probably pack your bags and head on over to California, but that’s just my guess.

Concealed carry on campus can be a good thing. Maybe it could have limited, if not, prevented, the Virginia Tech massacre. Maybe. But you know what, I’d rather be given the chance to prevent a Paris-style slaughter in my classroom than simply bar the doors shut with my belt and hope for a miracle.

Obviously, the flip side to all this is the need for faculty to feel secure at their place of work. Could a low grade now result in a shooting of a professor on campus? Why would a student that had a low grade, that felt compelled to commit a crime and shoot a professor, not just ignore a gun-free sign and continue with their intent? The thing is, they probably would. Criminals always find ways to be criminals. Tying the hands of the good, law-abiding citizens, isn’t the way to become a safer society. All it does is lower any resistance we could have had to combat evildoers – even on behalf of those that don’t want guns in our hands.

More info on the campus carry law can be found here.

Special thanks to Dallasnews.com and utexas.edu for contributing information in this article.

Image courtesy: mystatesman.com