By next week the UTSA Campus Carry Task Force will have submitted its revised, final recommendations for Dr. Ricardo Romo’s approval.
If approved, the recommendations will be submitted to the UT System Board of Regents for final clearance.
Not one of the recommendations will make our campus any safer in August, when the campus carry law goes into effect for all Texas public colleges and universities.
Because there is no realistic, pragmatic, legal, centrist method to allow civilians to carry firearms on a college campus —UTSA is not safe. College is not a safe place. College-aged modern American adults are — statistically and historically — not the safest demographic to hang out with.
A lot of us are crazy. More of us are weird — in both wonderful and unfortunate ways.
Statistically, three percent of Texans have concealed carry licenses (CHLs). How many of these men and women attend UTSA?
One day, one of these men — the majority of CHL holders are male — could save your life. But so could I. And it wouldn’t be with a gun.
As living, breathing, minds-of-gray-matter human beings with access to education, knowledge — learned inside and outside classrooms — is the strongest, most pragmatic tool to combat an armed assailant in a hostile, college setting.
Realistically, it’s more likely for one to outsmart, out-maneuver an assailant than to outshoot him.
Historically and generally, people who have concealed carry licenses are not criminals. In fact, most of them are perfectly friendly, law-abiding citizens. Resist the urge to profile and maltreat people with differing (hopefully developing) views.
Bringing weapons to public institutions of higher learning will be legal in Texas (as of Aug. 1, 2016), but it will never be right, responsible or smart.
If guns could make colleges safer, funds would have been directed to campus police departments — departments that will require additional funding that will be siphoned from existing funds in order to equip itself for the campus carry changes.
Campus carry — SB11— is the stupid idea that could.
Maybe our Texas legislators can reminisce of college days when they longed to pack a Glock among their back-to-school luggage. Amid tube socks, boot cut jeans, and the Bible.
Maybe.
The passage of and the support of campus carry legislation signals distrust in (and disconnect with) other members of society. Every day the decisions that we, as adults, make individually affect the lives of the individuals in our community. And guns are not the only method for death.
Living is a liability; so keep good company and in good spirit.
Improvements and safeguards to the community require a collective, sensibly non-combative approach, not an esoteric, isolationist one.
Perhaps carrying a gun makes carriers feel safe. Situations perceived as real may become real in their consequences, but perception is not reality: depending on the severity of the situation, a legally concealed weapon may be as powerful in protecting an individual as a bedtime story, however sharp a shooter that individual may be.
CHL holders: a gun will make you no more safe on campus than it will make you a hero on campus. Be advocates for responsible gun ownership by opposing this piece of legislation.
And if the most compelling reason for bringing a weapon on campus is because you can, consider the scores of other, equally immature and unwise, things to do instead — off campus.
Leave your gun at home.
