Students with Guns

August first 2019 marked the third anniversary of the Texas Carry Law which allows anyone (with a license) to carry a concealed handgun into public colleges, including in classrooms.

August first was also just two days before a 21 year old youth entered a Texas department store and murdered at least 20 people.

According to officials of the group Students for Concealed Carry (SCCC), some 350 colleges across six states allow concealed weapons.  The SCC claims that since the Carry Law went into effect no Texas college has reported a fatality, injury, threat or suicide attempt.  

The Colt 45

The SCCC claims to have more than 30,000 members in every state in the union, including the Hawaiian Islands and Alaska.  Though most members are students, about ten percent of the membership is made up of teachers.  

The organization was formed in 2007 and for years staged ‘empty holster’ demonstrations, in which members attended classes wearing a holster with no weapon in it.

The August third slaughter of at least 20 people took place in El Paso at a Walmart store just miles from at least two community colleges where presumably dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of students march into school every day with handguns hidden somewhere on their body.

The slaughter took place at ten in the morning.  Too bad it was a Saturday morning.  If it were a school day there would have been a whole company of young men with handguns, sitting in classrooms not ten minutes away.

Perhaps a few of them would have skipped school and went to Walmart.

Could they have prevented or lessened the impact of the murderous ‘troubled youth’ with an assault rifle?  

I don’t know, but it’s interesting to speculate that they may have been able to terminate the ‘troubled youth’ as soon as he opened fire.

Though the days of the Wild West belong to another century, perhaps we may have to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when every hombre wore a holster filled with a Colt 45. 

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