Texas students can carry real guns on campus, but not water guns or nerf guns (or scented candles)

131 thoughts on “Texas students can carry real guns on campus, but not water guns or nerf guns (or scented candles)”

1. Texas is such an outlier in the US. We should encourage then to secede again,taking Alabama and Mississippi with them.

   As a buddy of mine posts on FaceBook:

   Consecutive days that Texas is not an embarrassment to the US: 0

   1. I used to think that way, too. Then my state was taken over by Republicans. If Wisconsin ends up in this neo-Confederacy, how will we ever get back to sanity?

      1. I’d recommend a move to your neighbor state to the west. They say the Lake Wobegon area is very nice.

         1. It’s OK. Above average, I’d say.

            1. I see what you did there.

            2. Strong women & good-lookin’ men, too, I hear.

               You could do worse, I suppose.

      2. Maybe it would make more sense for Austin and Madison to secede from Texas and Wisconsin?

         1. I lose again. I live in Milwaukee!

            1. “Can the last Milwaukeeans to secede from Wisconsin please make sure the breweries come with them?”

            2. That’s not critical. Visit your local microbrewery. Leave Pabst to the Wisconsin hillbillies.

   2. Give Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California back to Mexico.

      1. I doubt Mexico would want them. They have standards…LOL

      2. Why southern California and New Mexico?

         1. He’s probably under the misapprehension that So. Cal. is a conservative area. In fact the whole place is trending the other way (even inland)quite strongly. Even Orange Co. is much improved. Why do you suppose Republicans can’t get elected statewide anymore? It’s not because of Butte or Tehama. A huge progressive majority in the vastly populous L.A. County is a lot of it.

   3. I wouldn’t mind seeing that either, and I live in Texas. Secession would be a great excuse for me to move to another state.

   4. I wonder how many people in the south (especially those espousing succession) know that their economies are beholden to the economies of states like New York and California. Without the massive economies of many of the (blue) states, the southern states would be in utter destitution, especially after the next hurricane season or oil spill or the continued onslaught of climate change. Southern states are a drag on the entire US, both economically and politically. I think I’ll start calling southern states ‘Mooch States’.

      1. Exactly, yet they threw a complete fit about giving New York and New Jersey “their tax dollars” for Hurricane Sandy. How about they tell us again about all the Federal tax dollars the northeast is taking…
         http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/05/Slide3/966724856.jpg

         1. Funny how every state gets back more than it pays.

            1. The break-even point on that graph is $1. For every $1 paid in taxes, how much does the state get back? So, every state from California on down — 14 states, or 28% of the states — is subsidizing all the states from Georgia on up, to some extent or another.

               b&

      2. American Civil War, biggest mistake ever. Should have just let them go.

2. Is that a gun in your pocket or…

   1. Of course it is. Do you think I’m some sort of criminal? Now give me tour wallet! And I’ll cop a super-TSA feel too, to see if you’ve got anything else worth having.

3. I don’t see any rational reason why the new law would make the campus rethink its rules against hot plates or other fire hazards, but yeah I’d be surprised if the ban on nerf guns and the like can hold up after this.

   On the other hand, the new law may actually make rules against fake guns even more important. You don’t want some student pulling out a real gun and killing someone who is running around with a cap gun. If you can’t prevent the real gun being there, it becomes doubly important to prevent the fake one from being there.

   halogen lights

   Um, why? They are safer in terms of fire than incandescent lights. And don’t we just call halogen lights “lights” now? You go to the store these days and buy a standard lightbulb, its halogen. Is this some weird Texas protest thing against the new bulb standards?

   1. “You go to the store these days and buy a standard lightbulb, its halogen.”

      The ones I now buy are LED.

      1. It is amazing how LED prices have dropped. Packages of four at Home Depot this morning were selling for less than $4. A DOLLAR PER BULB! (60W equivalent)

         1. I had the 4 overhead flood lights in my family room and the 6 in my office replaced, housing and all. The bulb is part of the housing, so there is no air space to lose heat or let in heat. They were $25 per fixture, but it will be well worth it over time since they last 6000 hours or 18 years of average use. Of course, I will not be there in 18 years.

   2. The halogen lights (tubes) in the last few fixtures of that type that I still have get very, very hot. They also draw a lot of power.

      I have replaced nearly all of our incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent bulbs with LED daylight (pure white) bulbs. There are now LED arrays available to replace fluorescent tubes (at least the standard US 4-foot and 8-foot ones). These are working great in our home and claim 40-year life! And they draw only between 15% and 20% of the power of the lights they replaced, with greater brightness (very noticeable).

   3. I think it is just an outdated fire rule. Halogen lights used to be small bulbs that got extremely hot. They were often used as desk lights and you dare not touch the light after it’d been on for a bit and they definitely got hot enough to set paper on fire. Now they encase the halogen bulb inside a larger bulb so it looks like a standard incandescent. The outside still gets hot, but spread over a greater area the temperature is not fire-starting hot.

   4. Incandescent lights are made in the U.S. of A. If you don’t use ’em, y’all can just leave. This is ‘Merica.

   5. I would expect the ban on water guns was more for potential water damage. I don’t think they make toy guns that look like the real thing anymore.

      Nerf guns? I dunno. Maybe the potential for property damage.

      1. Yeah, these foam tipped nerf bullets are bound to do more damage than a lump of lead at 700fps. Seriously, I’ve been hit in the eye by a nerf bullet and hardly felt it.

         1. No one is going to be throwing around lumps of lead for entertainment purposes, so comparing that to a nerf bullet is pointless.

            1. I think he was ridiculing the suggestion that a Nerf gun could cause ‘property damage’.

               Banning them is a perfect example of ‘left-wing offense hand wringing’ (to steal gluonspring’s phrase).

4. I used to take classes and teach some classes and labs at UT Austin. I wonder if I would be fired if I refused to teach anyone who carried a gun.

   It is hard to know where to begin with the number of reasons I find this disturbing. The most immediate sense of dread and fear and even unnecessary loathing I would begin to have towards people who may or not may not have a gun. Is this UT’s idea of making every suspicious of every one else. They have succeeded.

   1. So, you want to pull a Kim Davis? Good thinking.

      1. Contrary to popular belief, same-sex couples don’t have cooties, and cooties aren’t life-threatening.

         Gun possession is, unavoidably and intentionally, a very real threat to use lethal force at a moment’s notice at the sole discretion of the one with the gun.

         One of these things is not at all like the other one.

         b&

5. Brings the infamous George Carlin “Seven Words” bit into crystal-clear focus:

   “I’d like to substitute the word F*#% for the word Kill in all of those movie cliches we grew up with.

   “Okay, Sheriff, we’re gonna f*#% you now, but we’re gonna f*#% you slow.”

6. I’ve seen students getting extremely upset with profs over a bad grade. I think, now, the grading curve will skew higher.

   1. A UT Austin professor emeritus has resigned over precisely that issue.

      In a letter to UT President Greg Fenves, Daniel Hamermesh writes, “The risk that a disgruntled student might bring a gun into the classroom and start shooting at me has been substantially enhanced by the concealed carry law.”

      http://kxan.com/2015/10/07/ut-professor-resigns-in-face-of-campus-carry/

      1. I would resign too, and then resign the State of Texas.

      2. While the risk will be greater with this new law, I expect it’s not that much greater. Many of the nutters who are going to carry a concealed handgun to campus have been carrying them to campus illegally already (I have friends I am sure have done this). I expect this will only marginally increase their numbers. I mean, these are people who think they NEED a gun to be safe, people who feel that they are in mortal danger every time they leave their house. Someone with that degree of distorted risk-analysis ability is not going to be deterred by the tiny chance that someone will discover their concealed gun and charge them with a class A misdemeanor. They are going to carry their gun anyway because their life depends on it, or so they think (innumerate fools).

         1. I think the greater danger comes from the much higher probability of an accidental shooting based on some incidental event. If you hear something that sounds like a shot and see someone running with what looks like a handgun…etc.

      3. The professor clearly needs his own gun and must make sure he shoots first. Woe to the student whose weapon falls out of her purse…

         1. Obviously any responsible armed classroom would require professor training, like they do for cops and soldiers to rapidly identify friend or foe.

            I can see it now, all professors have to pass weapons training in a class with the seats filled with those pop-up cardboard targets that police train with. A cardboard student in the back row lifts something dark out of her backpack, your hand reaches for your gun… it’s a brush… one on the second row makes a sudden move with his hand… but his hand is empty… the little red haired girl in the front, that no one would suspect, suddenly raises a gun, but your scanning eyes had already picked her out… BLAM! right between the target eyes.

            To pass the weapons training course professors would have to demonstrate snap decision making, marksman-like aim, and the ability to deliver a lecture while constantly scanning the class for threats.

            1. …and cops and soldiers get it wrong occasionally. Perhaps it will take a shoot-out in English class before legislators reconsider the wisdom of this development.

            2. Sure. It’s absurd. I just think it’s funny to imagine the professor training. It’d make a good SNL skit.

      4. The only rational (in the EN_TX – English as spoken in Texas – sense, of “rational”, not the EN_GB or EN_US senses of “rational”) response to that is to pull out your fully-automatic assault rifle and let rip at the offender. OK, so if a few dozen other students die, that’s a necessary price to pay for the removal of that one under-performing perp. Isn’t it.
         A few weeks ago I commented that I didn’t really have time – being more abroad than normal, with a dodgy connection – to really comment on the penultimate campus massacre. (Or was it the antepenultimate one? I’ve forgotten already.) But I was sure then that there would be another one along soon to comment on.
         That was one or two college massacres ago – wasn’t there one last week in Texas somewhere? I wasn’t quite sure with the TV being tuned to a French news channel. It looks like my prediction is safe. Like buses, if I miss this one, there will be another one along soon.

         1. Like buses, if I miss this one, there will be another one along soon.

            Must be an European thing. Busses sure don’t work like that here in the States….

            b&

            1. It’s a thing of not living in a culture utterly dominated by the personal automobile. I still probably cover more miles by bus, foot and bike than by car, and I’ve had a driving license since I was about 27 (I’d have to check) and owned a car for about 10 of the 20-odd years I’ve had a license.
               I suspect some of those numbers won’t make sense to Americans.

            2. As with most Americans, I learned to drive in high school before I was old enough to get a license, and got the license as soon as I turned 18.

               …but, unlike most Americans, you can count the number of cars I’ve owned or regularly driven on one hand with fingers left over…and not a one of them was originally manufactured after I was born.

               That makes me even more of an outlier than you. Many Millennials are on a path to a similar life story about cars as yours.

               b&

   2. Does it also mean that, along with course materials for class, a professor in Texas would be able to carry a gun in the front, conspicuous mesh-woven pocket of their backpack to their classroom. Would this prevent students from complaining? Quite a scary thought! Back to the old Wild West era.

      1. I’n not sure Texas ever left the wild, wild west.

         1. Did the wild, wild west ever exist, except in Hollywood?

      2. I think that would count as open carry, still not allowed so far as I am aware.

7. I just read the amended bill at the linked site.

   As I read it, per Section d), the schools can limit where the carrying is allowed, they are just not allowed to blanket ban concealed guns.

   They also have to report to the state legislature on their rules every other year. (SO much for reducing burdensome regulations and paperwork!)

   And it’s an offense to “flash” a weapon. (A person would have to keep it really concealed.)

   Still very bad of course.

8. There’s yet another concern about pistol-toting college students: Lost guns. I work at the alma mater of Professor Ceiling Cat. Someone started a Lost & Found at William & Mary Facebook group. I used to find stuff all the time and there wasn’t any good way to try to find the owner. (When I found a stray earring, I would take it home and hang it on my wife’s earring tree. It was entertaining to watch the look on her face when she tried to figure out where that earring came from.) These college students lose everything! ID cards. Credit cards. Laptops & tablets. Items of clothing. Keys. Wallets. Backpacks. Backpacks containing wallets, laptops, etc. Enough chargers to power the campus for days. Class notes. Projects due that day. USB drives. In other words, stuff that people after college tend to keep track of. I can just imagine what would happen to a Glock left in a backpack, which in turn was left in the library.

   1. Go to one of the local bars on a Saturday morning, tell them you left your ID or credit card there last night, and ask if they have it. If they’re a typical bar, they’ll pull out a stack of ‘lost’ plastic 4-5″ high; in count, a number probably approaching a hundred. Probably more if its a large bar.

      1. Sounds bizarre. My plastic leaves my wallet at the cash machine, and goes back in at the cash machine, before the cash goes into the wallet, and stays there. If I use plastic at the bar (which is only allowed in bars that serve food), the same procedure applies.
         Is this one of those places that require ID cards to be left behind the bar? Our rules are that if an ID check is required, the first bar person serving does that, and returns the ID to the owner. Precisely because the bars do not want the hassle of having 50 cards lined up behind the bar, and people asking to have their ID returned because they’re going to another bar, then not going and presenting the ID again …
         Hang on – is this the light weight of US regulation again?

         1. In American restaurants with servers, the server brings you the check as soon as it’s apparent that you’re done eating. Some places are fine with you staying as long after that as you like; others use various techniques to shuffle you out as quickly as possible.

            You then pay your server with either cash or a credit card (other forms of payment are vanishingly rare and often not accepted). The server vanishes with the payment and returns with the card and the receipt for you to sign (if credit) or change (if cash).

            You then would add a tip to the credit card receipt on the indicated line, or leave behind some cash for the tip. If paying with cash, an accepted variation is to simply leave the total plus tip on the table and walk out.

            And servers and bartenders and other employees in designated “tipped jobs” are paid a pittance, well below the standard minimum wage, and rely almost entirely on the tips to make a decent income. No joke; total wages for the entire shift will be under $20, but it’s not unusual for servers to make ten times that in tips.

            I know that will all be alien and bizarre to an European, but it’s the way the restaurant business is done in America.

            b&

            1. Which leaves open the question of how the plastic gets left behind. I just don’t get that – it’s like leaving your wallet behind. You’ll notice it’s absence within seconds of getting up to move.

            2. Oh, that part.

               The server hands you the bill, sometimes inside a wallet. You hand the bill plus the card, in the wallet if provided. The server comes back with the receipt and the card, again in the wallet if it’s used.

               If you’re smart and / or you’ve learned the lesson from prior experience, you’ll immediately sign the receipt and put the card back where it belongs.

               But restaurant dining can be distracting social affairs including alcohol. You might not want to interrupt the joke you’re telling, for example, to deal with the bookkeeping. Especially since you have to decide how much to tip at that point, which involves arithmetic that many people struggle with. So, the paperwork, including the card, sits forgotten on the table.

               Even if you do an instinctive pat of your pocket when you get up to make sure your wallet is where it belongs, your wallet may well be there — just without the card that’s still laying on the table hidden inside the wallet or buried under the receipt or a napkin or whatever.

               Plus, there’s another factor to consider…half of all people are of below average intelligence, and the American average ain’t all that great to begin with….

               b&

            3. Even if you do an instinctive pat of your pocket

               as the Catholic liturgy goes – with actions – “spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch”!
               (or do people not do that in your world?)

            4. @Aidian

               Absent-minded as I am, I’ve never felt the need to check on Item #2…

            5. Not necessarily. I’ve left my card behind on occasion. You just need to be distracted by something at the end of a transaction. (Though this more often applies to my debit card which is what I usually use).

               On one occasion I left my credit card at a gas station in Manunui, 200 miles away. Didn’t notice its absence for several days. I worked out where I had last used it, looked them up in the phone book and rang them, and they had it behind the counter. They posted it back to me. That’s service!

               cr

9. The Texas State Capitol building — a truly beautiful building in downtown Austin — is open to the public virtually every day. Visitors, of course, must pass through metal detectors at every entrance of the building and are then free to walk through the building’s halls and public rooms and view the legislators when they’re in session. There is one exception, though, to the metal detectors. Signs at the entrance advise visitors with CHL’s (concealed handgun licenses) who are carrying handguns to inform the inspectors and then are escorted around the metal detectors so that they aren’t set off.

   http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/U.S./876/493/071910_capitol.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

   1. Lunacy.

   2. That’s brilliant. “Hey, I am an insecure psychopath, I can haz passage to your massive granite dome? I just got myz Louisa…she’s my darlinz Colt 45, I sleeps with herz every night. Cantcha see Iz a lovin’ kinda guy.” \end Deep Hubble Sarcasm

10. Can they already open-carry? And if not, what is the penalty for displaying a firearm?

    1. “… what is the penalty for displaying a firearm?”

       All the other nut jobs in the room haul theirs out and shoot you.

11. We’ve had concealed carry on university campuses in Utah for some time. I’ve even seen people openly carrying guns a couple of times. So far there have been no shootings that I’m aware of. There have been threats though, the most famous being the Sarkeesian event one year ago. The university administration interprets our law as tying their hands in these cases, so they won’t consider firearm bans or metal detectors even at special events where there is elevated risk. I think it’s just a matter of time before somebody decides to draw a weapon, and we’ll get to find out what really happens when everyone is armed.

12. As George Carlin would probably say, there is an upside to this. There will probably be fewer Texans

13. If Jan Brewer had not signed a similar bill into law in Arizona, the recent campus shooting there would have been a lot less likely to happen.
    All apologies in advance to anyone who finds this offensive, but gun nuts, and yes I am perfectly comfortable describing them as “nuts”, are horse’s asses. And I don’t mean that in the sense that they’re horse’s asses simply because they support ridiculous and deadly gun laws, it’s that they arrogantly propagate a BS, swaggering John Wayne culture that, when combined with a society awash in firearms, produces the horrific results to which we’re becoming inured. There is a level on which they really enjoy shoving this stuff down the rest of America’s throat. The data tell us that it has nothing to do with self defense. Statistically, carrying a gun for self defense makes about as much sense as standing on an NYC street corner with a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich in your pocket, just in case your cab driver is Elvis Presley. “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” is a popular bumper sticker in the south, usually affixed to some awful, gas guzzling behemoth of a vehicle. It is appalling that thousands of people, particularly young black men, have to die a violent death or be maimed for life so that insecure morons who’ve watched too many Chuck Norris movies can play cowboy. I’m just speculating here, but I’d bet dollars to pesos that we’d have tighter gun laws if there were 435 middle aged white women being shot dead in one year in Chicago (2012).
    And to allow this to happen on the campus at UT Austin, given the history of gun violence at that institution, is just callous and arrogant. I’d say shame on Gregg Abbott but even a cursory glance at the man’s record indicates that he has none.

    (http://www.nplainfield.org/cms/lib5/NJ01000402/Centricity/Domain/235/HighSchool/Rampage/major%20massacres/1universityoftexas.html)

    I’m sorry for getting so fired up, but I live in a “stand your ground” state with a couple million of these gun-toting yahoos and I’m not leaving just because they don’t know how to read the 2nd Amendment and are prone to throwing temper tantrums every time they think someone might take their toys away from them.

    1. I kind of think most gun nuts are cowards, pure and simple.

       I’m almost fifty years old and have never encountered a situation where a gun would be remotely useful. I’ve ridden my bike scores of miles in the dark on lonely country roads, I’ve ridden inner city busses and subways in the nation’s largest cities at all hours of the day and night, I’ve gotten lost in “scary” looking neighborhoods after getting off on the wrong stop, I’ve had someone try to steal my car from my driveway while I was there, and so on. I’ve felt some concern, but I’ve never really been afraid. I’ve never felt afraid enough to buy pepper spray, much less invest in a gun. Forget the hazard of having a loaded weapon on your person, I just don’t feel like I’ve ever encountered a risk that would be worth a few hundred dollars of insurance to mitigate.

       Apparently, though, these gun people go around in a state of terror all the time. Or they would, if they didn’t have their pocket-mojo to give them some spine.

       I have no respect for them.

       Exceptions: certain celebrities might have a different risk profile, certain business owners, people living in remote areas, etc. I can imagine that there are people for whom owning a gun might be useful, but they are the rare exception. Almost everyone who conceal carries is, in my perception, a coward.

       1. I agree, they are cowards, nit worthy of our respect. I can see your point about certain business owners but in the case of celebrities, I think the better option is trained security guards.

          1. Agreed about security, though some people who are visible might not be able to afford it.

             I was thinking of Sam Harris’ advocation of carrying a gun. My first reaction to his defense of carrying was that he was another innumerate fool, but then I thought that if you’re a very visible person who is likely to raise the ire of unstable violent people (religious generally, Islamists particularly), then in his case the numbers might be different. The chance that he’ll find himself in a parking garage with a machete wielding nutter is substantially greater than mine, so it’s dimly possible that it’s rational for him to carry a gun (though I’m still skeptical… guns are a way to convert any passion into death, and passions are more common than attacks for almost everyone).

             1. I think you’re absolutely right about Sam. Any of us might see things differently if we received the number of death threats he does.

       2. It’s amazing how the people you hear the most from, saying that they “need to protect themselves” are: White, adult, males, mostly middle class ‘Muricans. You know, the most privileged and secure large group ever to walk the earth.

          Once, as a very young man, a colleague of my friend offered to “show us his guns.” We did look at them. He said, “I could hold off an army up here!” I asked him, “Are you expecting an army?”

          And, as Sam Harris has pointed out, he couldn’t hold off a single soldier armed with an M3 recoilless.

    2. Some years ago, my parents caught the gun fever because Glenn Beck had them convinced that “Hussein Obama” was going to take away everyone’s guns, so the solution, obviously, was to buy more guns. (I still can’t figure out that one!) Of course, the ostensible reason was “home defense.” Defense from what? They live in one of the quietest, sleepiest, safest outer-fringe Dallas suburbs where nothing interesting ever happens. They never actually need the guns, they just take them to the range once in a blue moon and otherwise just let them collect dust under the bed. If “Hussein” really did take their guns away, I doubt their lives would be affected one bit.

    3. It is appalling that thousands of people, particularly young black men, have to die a violent death or be maimed for life so that insecure morons who’ve watched too many Chuck Norris movies can play cowboy.

       Your autocorrect is badly set up. It is substituting appalling above where you obviously typed desirable.
       Becuz ‘Muricuh. Greatest country in t’world (outside Yorkshire).

14. Great.

    Just great.

    Let’s go ahead and run with the fantasy that’s being use to justify this insanity for a moment, and imagine what’s now likely to happen in the case of a deranged shooter on campus. A disgruntled student comes to school armed for bear and starts spraying bullets. Said disgruntled student, having had no prior record because of youth, has had no difficulty in acquiring the arsenal — meaning there’ll be more such disgruntled students armed for bear in the first place. And, now, all the other students around the disgruntled one with concealed weapons for “protection” pull out their guns to play Rambo with the disgruntled student…and we’ve now got dozens of shooters all shooting at each other, with that many more bullets wildly flying downrange.

    Rather like this, only with bullets instead of ping-pong balls.

    Is that really what we want?

    Really?

    b&

    1. Wow. I wonder how the best computers on the planet would match up against predicting the order to which those mousetraps go off.

       1. Simulating the effects of a mousetrap chain reaction would be child’s play; our biggest supercomputers are typically used to perform simulated tests of nuclear weapons.

          But predicting the exact order of this particular chain reaction? Not a chance. You couldn’t begin to get the requisite precision on the initial conditions. Heisenberg wouldn’t let you.

          b&

    2. When the police finally do arrive, they all get shot, because police shoot anyone brandishing a gun.

       1. Several colleagues and I recently sat through a 3 hour training session about what to do in an “active shooter” scenario at our university. The campus police chief was asked about his feelings on concealed carry on campus (which is not allowed yet, but the trend is not looking good). He replied, as virtually every law enforcement professional I have every heard has replied to this sort of question – he is dead-set against the idea. The reason is obvious. The cops would have to sort out the good guys with guns from the bad guys with guns. I have to agree with the pros (cops) on this one. It’s absurd that state legislators don’t as well.

          1. Call me cynical, but I think the people who support this sort of thing know very well what the outcome will be. These are people who are seeking to overthrow government. These are neo-confederates who are intent on tearing the social fabric so that they can rebuild an imaginary past where Jesus is king, minorities know their place, and women are subject to the control of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. In other words, this is the American Taliban. They are not trying to avoid violence on campuses. They are trying to make it happen.

             1. These are people who are seeking to overthrow government.

                Sort of. The ones I know, and I know a lot, are really just play acting that role. For a lot of them, their gun collection is a kind of cosplay. I know there are the exceptions, like Timmothy McVeigh’s and so on, but I think the hordes of morons driving these laws are just engaging in some kind of odd make believe. I have a good friend who talks about the need to arm himself to “defend against tyranny” all the time. But if you ask him what, exactly, would have to happen, for him to start shooting at US soldiers, government officials, or law enforcement, you are unlikely to get anything useful out of him. The only concrete thing he is likely to offer is the ironic, “When they come for my guns”. Well, good thing you have guns to defend against that! Of course, I think that’s a self-aggrandizing lie too. After all, he didn’t rise up and storm the gates when he discovered that the government, the hated Obama administration even, was massively spying on him in direct violation of the fourth amendment. So what makes him think there is any other remotely likely scenario where he’d take up arms? I think if they came for his guns he’d spit and cuss and maybe even try to hide a couple, but he’d basically comply.

             2. Was Timothy McVeigh a gun nut? I thought his weapon of choice was anfo and aluminium dust.

                cr

             3. Right, not an example of a gun nut (might have been, but I’m unaware of it) just an example of someone with anti-government violent rebellion talk that was more than just empty talk.

             4. Forgive me for splitting hairs 🙂

                cr

             5. Large amounts of aluminium dust are pretty hard to get hold of (and were before McVeigh). If I were planning a bombing effort, I’d go for straight ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate/ Fuel Oil). If I wanted to give it some extra boost, I’d probably look for a supplier of LOX (Liquid OXygen) and sugar, but that has obvious logistical difficulties.
                But – wasn’t McVeigh part of some “militia”, if not a well-ordered one, which makes some major degree of gun-nuttery a near certainty.

             6. I thought it was anfo and aluminium dust, and I got that information, not from the subversive bomb-recipe-purveying Internet, but from CNN news, right after the explosion. But see below.

                Aluminium dust works extremely well. It’s a constituent of paint I think, and in my young days I bought a jar of it over the counter, no questions asked. It’s so fine, it flows almost like a thick fluid, and after pouring it the air is sparkly with drifting particles. Also, as I found to my delight, it really adds ooomph to any firework mixture, and contributes a blinding white flash. Google ‘ammonal’ or see
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_explosives_used_during_World_War_II and note how many of those had ~20% aluminium added for luck.

                But back to Timothy McVeigh – according to the Wikipedia page on the bombing, the only Al powder was a constituent of the 350 lbs of Tovex blasting explosive they used as boosters for the barrels of ammonium nitrate / nitromethane or ANFO (they used some of each). Also (according to Wikipedia) many of the barrels of ANFO contained cylinders of acetylene ‘intended to increase the fireball and the brisance of the blast’. This I find very odd. Acetylene in commercial use is dissolved into acetone which is itself absorbed in a porous material called ‘agamassan’. This is because ‘straight’ liquid acetylene is somewhat more sensitive and explosive than nitroglycerine, so obviously McVeigh couldn’t have used it that way or his rental truck would never have got as far as Oklahoma City. I just doubt that, in its commercial form in which condition occasionally people drop the cylinders off trucks onto concrete floors and usually get away with it, the acetylene could contribute anything other than a post-blast fireball. In fact I’d be surprised if the blast of ANFO even ruptured the cylinders.

                cr

             7. Anarchists?

15. I don’t know what is the response of the local Police in Texas is to a peaceful student campus protest demonstration but in view of this ruling I would think it unlikely any of the campus or local police would be willing to put themselves at risk by assuming it really is peaceful.
    At Kent only one side was well armed

16. This is all part of a plot to get Texas out of the Union. Eventually enough of this crap will be enacted that the other 49 states will simply say, “don’t let the door hit you in the ass… “

    1. Except for the eight other states
       that allow concealed carry on campuses. Including Oregon, where it didn’t help with the recent slaughter there. Pro-gun advocates are pushing for legislation in other states, also, to allow guns on more campuses.

       1. True, My own home state is sadly on that list though it is at least very progressive about most other things.

          1. Focusing on states misses the real breakdown. Urban centers are mostly liberal, rural mostly conservative. Red states just have a greater fraction of rural residents. The actual splits aren’t that great. For example, in CA the conservative/liberal split in presidential elections is typically about 40/50. And in TX, the split is the same just reversed, 50/40 (with the rest independent or some other thing). It makes a noticeable difference in laws, but it is a mistake to view any of these states as homogeneous.

17. Makes perfect sense. Can’t have people with real guns going around accidently shooting people with fake guns. If someone pulls out a gun you need to be able to shoot them without worrying it might be fake. :p

    1. Right and imagine the trigger warnings necessary if fake guns were allowed, “Caution, the gun may look real and cause unnecessary anxiety about a campus shooting.” Fortunately, all students can rest assured that a maniac with something that looks like a gun really is a maniac with a gun.

       1. I like the juxtaposition of right-wing gun nuttery with left-wing offense hand wringing.

          “Trigger warning: This course may contain students and teachers with concealed instruments of sudden death, and equally disturbing, the reading may depict episodes of inappropriate sexual touching.”

          And “trigger warning” becomes a play on words too.

          1. “trigger warning” becomes a play on words too.

             Your making me nervous already. I want a kitten.

          2. “I like the juxtaposition of right-wing gun nuttery with left-wing offense hand wringing.”

             Nicely put!

             cr

       2. “Fortunately, all students can rest assured that a maniac with something that looks like a gun really is a maniac with a gun.”

          And maniacs with guns can rest assured in the knowledge they can bring them on campus with impunity.

18. Maybe if they carry zucchinis instead of dildos. Or zucchinis carved into dildos. These are just some economical suggestions.

    1. Doesn’t seem particularly hygienic….

       b&

       1. Yeah, poor zucchini!

          1. UTA: where the women are women, and the zucchini are nervous?

             b&

    2. Attach a pistol handle to a dildo. Now that would be a real open-carry, strap-on device.

    3. Dildos with bobbleheads of the state legislature on their ends.

19. And I am being asked to put “Trigger Warnings” on my syllabus for material that may make students feel “less safe.”? How unsafe can showing some blood in a cultural anthropology class be to an armed student?

20. Actually, the students can legally bring Nerf guns to the campus, but only after the Nerf gun has been modified to fire live bullets.

    1. +1

    2. Come to think of it, Nerf guns which fire live bullets can be easily made using desktop manufacturing. As they say: “Any kid could do it”.

21. The no wireless router rule probably reflects a rule preventing students from purchasing their own Internet service, and likely the school provides reasonable coverage on campus. It’s sort of like your (or anyone’s) workplace where bringing your own wireless router would be considered a security risk. Chances are even if it’s an enterprise router it’ll be configured wrong and you won’t keep up on the firmware updates.

    Of course the school will be monitoring all the traffic through their networks, so careful when you torrent movies boys and girls!

22. “The rule makes sense of course. Seeing someone running around on campus firing a toy a gun could definitely cause some issues.”

    Apparently that person has never seen a nerf gun or a squirt gun…

23. The apparent incongruity of what is prohibited and what isn’t is just a quirky result of the collision between PC cotton-wool risk-averse security theatre on the one hand (wishing to ban anything that could conceivably be a hazard); and the gun-totin’ NRA lobby on the other. They’re not directly opposed on all fronts – I doubt the NRA cares if wireless routers or incense are banned – which is why this rather absurd anomaly is likely to persist.

    cr

24. “Seeing someone running around on campus firing a toy a gun could definitely cause some issues.”
    Yeah, issues like them getting SHOT by one of the ones carrying a REAL gun!

25. Oh my god, Texas has campus carry now? Oh what shall we do? Other states have had campus carry before Texas and just look at them, student killing teachers for low grades, teachers shooting students for disrupting lectures, it’s like the wild west. Why is the media hiding these frequent shootings? Why aren’t we hearing more of them? It’s as if these gun grabber fantasies aren’t happening in the real world…. Oh.

    -A member of the reality-based community.

    1. There are plenty of shootings on campus, most recently in Oregon, and carry laws have done nothing to stop them. Why are you so anxious to have people carrying guns on college campuses?

       1. Campus carry laws does not increase the frequency either, right? If it does, the gun grabbers would be harping it at their ivory towers.

          I want people to enjoy their civil liberties, don’t you?

          1. Enjoy?! eew just eew.

             Exhibit A: see above why many people outside of the U.S. say Wah?, Huh??, WTF !, and finally eew!

             I’m glad that Dan’s seems to be the minority view on this site at least.

             1. I agree with Dan that this is not going to make any significant difference in gun violence either way. I am bothered less by the actual danger that guns pose, which even though the US is a crazy outlier in terms of gun violence it is still small enough odds that it has no effect on my daily life. Rather, it bothers me because of what it says about the mentality of the proponents. It says, clearly, that the nutters are running the asylum.

                My family has always owned guns. But something has changed. When I was a kid guns were for hunting and maybe to have on hand to confront burglars with, should any ever show up, which they never did. No one longed, or even dreamed, of carrying a hand gun around with them all of the time. It simply didn’t cross anyone’s mind. Fast forward to today. My whole family, my 75 year old mom and her husband, my brother, my step-sister, all have their concealed carry license and each of them has their own personal gun that they carry around with them. My parents agonized over their road trip to Alaska because, going through Canada, they might have some trouble toating their guns. For a while it looked like they might even cancel the trip because of this snag. That’s just psychotic. But this psychosis has gripped a large chunk of the country. Concealed carry on campuses is just a symptom of a general derangement, and is disturbing not so much for the danger it poses so much as for the underlying mental disturbance it shines a light on.

             2. “the nutters are running the asylum.”
                That’s very much on target(pun?). We rational humans are always trying to promote a more humane, compassionate, effective, scientific, society. This is clearly a setback and we need very much to challenge it.

             3. If they didn’t like going through Canada, what happens if they fly anywhere? The TSA would certainly deprive them of their nerf gun / glock / personal Minigun. Or are guns allowed in checked baggage?

                cr

             4. Or are guns allowed in checked baggage?

                Not only are the allowed in checked baggage…checked baggage with guns gets more official attention making the luggage less likely to be subjected to loss and theft. There’re people who fly with expensive equipment — cameras, musical instruments, that sort of thing — who keep a starter pistol in the case so they can legitimately demand the special treatment. Nor do you have to stretch much in such cases for a legitimate excuse…a week ago today I was on stage playing cornet and flugelhorn in a brass band concert that included a six-shooter firing blanks into the ceiling.

                There’re various legal requirements, hoops to jump through; don’t just show up to the airport with a gun in your bags if you think this is something worth doing. Do your homework, first.

                b&

             5. Ha! This question is perfect. I don’t know what happens if they fly anywhere because after 9/11… THEY GAVE UP FLYING!!!

                Not joking, sadly. They got their concealed carry guns/licenses sometime after 9/11, 2005 I think. Since they have given up flying they don’t confront this issue. I think my mom’s husband would still fly, but my mom is done. These things are not unrelated, the gun thing and the flying. They imbibe a steady diet of paranoia from the right-wing news outlets they tune into. Although they live in a small town in TX that no one cares about, least wise international terrorists, their worries about terrorism are palpable. As a result, they blanket support every war, torture, surveillance, whatever someone tells them will make us safer from or able to get revenge on terrorists.

                As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not especially afraid of the hazard that gun owners, or CCW holders, pose, but the pervasive paranoia behind so much of it, a paranoia so disconnected from reality, really does disturb me.

             6. Re paranoia, among the flood of spam I get are emails warning that ISIS is invading the US and Obama is about to take guns off paraplegics and the elderly…
                just click on the link for a video with all the horrifying details.

                I’d quote one but I deleted them all. Dang.

                I’m not sure if it’s paranoid loonies or just an attempt to make me load a Trojan.

                cr

          2. The fact that you carry a gun for enjoyment is disturbing in itself. I wonder if there’s more of a chance of an accidental shooting if one carries a gun or one doesn’t.

26. In the spirit of John W Loftus’ “The Outsider Test for Faith”,

    I see a book opportunity here:

    “The Outsider Test for WTF!”

27. When will Texas figure out that the only solution to bad guys on campus with Nerf guns & water pistols is good guys on campus with Nerf guns & water pistols?

    The dildo protest seems apt, since Texas already has a plastic dick in the governor’s mansion.

28. Cocks v Glocks?

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