Texas Professors Will Learn to Like Guns. Or Else (Bloomberg) [View all]

[eppur_se_muova]

By
Francis Wilkinson

Three University of Texas professors were informed this week that they will be "subject to discipline" if they try to ban concealed handguns from their classrooms. The warning was issued in a state legal brief connected to the professors' lawsuit seeking permission to prohibit guns in class.

It's hard to imagine a more vibrant canvas for culture war than the Texas campus-carry mandate, which went into effect at state colleges and universities earlier this month. Texas is gun country, and the state has joined a half-dozen others that guarantee campus-carry rights. But the University of Texas flagship campus in Austin is an elite institution and a liberal citadel in a state that caroms between business conservative and right-wing nutty.

The pointy-headed professors may once have had their run of the expansive Austin campus. But Republicans in the Legislature showed them who's boss: "You want boys in the girls' bathroom? We can top that. We'll give you loaded guns in your classroom."

Naturally, the three professors cited legal arguments in their complaint. There is a First Amendment claim that fear of guns in the classroom will chill academic freedom and robust speech. There is a creative Second Amendment claim that the Texas law makes no allowance for campus gun-toting to be "well regulated" in any way that enhances the personal safety of the professors and others. There is a Fourteenth Amendment due-process claim that the professors' rights have been trampled.

But the gist of the lawsuit, best gleaned between the lines, is basically: "Are you nuts?"
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more: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-12/texas-professors-learn-to-like-guns-or-else