Joseph Warta writes for the Martin Center about a court case involving Texas-style university safety measures.
The fight for gun rights on campus is often contentious and generally does not favor the Second Amendment. But in August, pro-gun advocates won a major battle when a federal appeals court threw out a legal challenge by three University of Texas at Austin professors to Texas’s “campus carry” law.
Campus carry, approved by the Texas legislature in 2015 and implemented a year later, allows those with concealed carry permits to possess firearms on public college campuses. The ruling expanded a 20-year-old law by allowing concealed carry permit holders to carry firearms inside buildings, rather than only on campus property open spaces.
In the two years since the law took effect, Texas colleges have been free of mass gun violence, much like previous years.
When the proposal became law, professors statewide protested, and three UT-Austin professors brought a lawsuit against the state, claiming that it violated their academic freedom and increased the likelihood of violence.
But the grave threat to academic freedom claimed by professors has been nothing more than fear-mongering.
