THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Universities in Texas are set to be forced to allow students and academics to carry guns on campus, in a victory for a firearms lobby unbowed after last month’s massacre in Arizona.
A new law that looks certain to pass through the Texas legislature would mean that its 38 public colleges, which are attended by half a million students, must permit concealed handguns on site.
It would become only the second state, after Utah, to enforce such a rule.
More than 20 states have rejected similar proposals introduced since the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007.
At present, colleges in Texas – along with churches and businesses – are free to ban firearms from their premises. Guns are prohibited from university buildings, dormitories and surrounding grounds.
The plan is likely to astonish most who recall the mass shootings at Virginia Tech, where a student killed 32 people, and in Northern Illinois the following year, where five people were murdered.
It also comes just six weeks after six people were killed and 13, including the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, were wounded during a shooting spree in a supermarket car park in Tucson, Arizona. >>> Jon Swaine, New York | Monday, February 21, 2011
