'Campus Carry' goes into effect as Texas remembers UT Tower shootings 50 years later

FoxNews.com ^ | 8/1/2016 | FoxNews.com

[servo1969]

Concealed handgun license holders in Texas can carry their weapons into public university buildings, classrooms and dorms starting Monday, a day that also marks 50 years after the mass shooting at the University of Texas' landmark clock tower.

The campus-carry law pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican legislative majority makes Texas one of a handful of states guaranteeing the right to carry concealed handguns on campus.

Texas has allowed concealed handguns in public for 20 years. Gun rights advocates consider it an important protection, given the constitutional right to bear arms, as well as a key self-defense measure in cases of campus violence, such as the 1966 UT shootings and the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech.

Opponents of the law fear it will chill free speech on campus and lead to more campus suicide. The former dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture left for a position at the University of Pennsylvania because of his opposition to allowing guns on campus.

[Red Badger]

Opponents of the law fear it will chill free speech on campus and lead to more campus suicide.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life......... Robert A. Heinlein

[WKUHilltopper]

“Opponents of the law fear it will chill free speech on campus and lead to more campus suicide.”

LOL! What a bunch of BS. Nothing has quelled free speech on campuses more than universities.

[T-Bone Texan]

"...Opponents of the law fear it will chill free speech on campus..."

You mean like violent black people and snowflakes do now?

There is a lot of liberal doublespeak in this scary, scary article.

[PAR35]

Charles Whitman - Catholic altar boy, Eagle Scout, Marine veteran.

One of his first targets on the ground from the tower was a member of the terrorist SDS organization.

[Kenton]

...Marine-trained sniper Charles Whitman climbed to the observation deck of the 27-story clock tower in the heart of UT's flagship Austin campus, armed with rifles, pistols and a sawed-off shotgun on Aug. 1, 1966, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30...

I remember this event. I saw the videos on TV the evening that it happened.

The cops on campus carried .38 special revolvers, which were of no use against somebody up 27 stories up in the air, armed with a deer hunting rifle.

But, this WAS Texas, and dozens of Texans stopped, took their own deer rifles out of their cars and trucks, and returned fire.

These armed citizens kept Whitman pinned down, unable to expose himself from cover in order to shoot, until a couple of police were able to get up on the roof and take him down.

[waterhill]

You can still see chips/marks on the tower from citizens with rifles shooting at him. With binoculars of course.

[yetidog]

“One of his first targets on the ground from the tower was a member of the terrorist SDS organization.”

I was a student on campus that day. I have never heard that about any of his victims.

[tuffydoodle]

It’s not the licensed concealed carry holders that people need to fear. They will protect you. Liberals, pull your heads out of your asses for a second, wipe the shit out of your eyes and ears and you’ll see that the VAST majority of murderers are not licensed to carry....they are happy to break laws and do whatever they please....including kill you and your loved ones. The cops need help from licensed holders.

[TalonDJ]

“dozens of Texans stopped, took their own deer rifles out of their cars and trucks, and returned fire.”

PROFESSORS used rifles they had in their OFFICES to shoot back.

[PAR35]

I ran across it in a magazine in the dentists office sometime in the past year - I think it was D Magazine - something upscale like that.

But since I can’t track it down online, here’s a less legitimate source. It was the pregnant girl:

“Claire Wilson James was born in Texas in 1947, and was raised in Dallas. Introduced to Dr. Martin Luther King at age 12 and trained in nonviolent resistance by James Farmer at 16, she worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi voter registration drive of 1965. She was active in Austin Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) when she was the first person shot from the tower — with her boyfriend and unborn baby both being killed. “
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/25/rag-radio-keith-maitland-director-of-ut-sniper-documentary-tower-and-charles-whitman-victim-claire-wilson-james/

[archy]

But, this WAS Texas, and dozens of Texans stopped, took their own deer rifles out of their cars and trucks, and returned fire.

These armed citizens kept Whitman pinned down, unable to expose himself from cover in order to shoot, until a couple of police were able to get up on the roof and take him down.

At least one was going to let one of the pistol-only armed cops borrow his NRA/DCM M1 carbine, when the cop observed that if it was sighted in for his eyes, he might as well do the shooting. Since the tower shooter was also using an M1 carbine, it at least gave the ad hoc raiding team equal firepower, if not an edge. Another, Bookstore employee and military veteran Allen Crum, borrowed a rifle from Department of Public Safety Agent W.A. Cowan and went along with the Austin policemen working their way to the roof.

Once the two cops and their armed and deputized civilian assistant got up to the roof, one of the cops fired all six in his revolver at Whitman from about 50 feet, and missed with all six. The other one used his shotgun and ended the problem with two fatal shots of 00-buckshot hitting Whitman in the head, neck, and left side. After Whitman's first shot, it was four minutes until anyone even called the police to report what was going on, that would be different today.

Austin PD photos *here*

Four men who braved the deadly accurate sniper fire by Charles Joseph Whitman from the Univ. of Texas tower met with newsmen in Austin on August 2, 1966.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Technical correction: Texas has converted CHL’s to LTC’s.

[archy]

“Claire Wilson James was born in Texas in 1947, and was raised in Dallas. Introduced to Dr. Martin Luther King at age 12 and trained in nonviolent resistance by James Farmer at 16, she worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi voter registration drive of 1965. She was active in Austin Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) when she was the first person shot from the tower — with her boyfriend and unborn baby both being killed. “

Interestingly and unsurprisingly, in more recent years she's been active in the efforts to disarm Texas citizens and outlaw the possession and carry of firearms in public places, including *Gun Free[fire] School Zones*:

Anti-Gun Violence Activists

John Woods
and
Claire Wilson James

Survivors of Virginia Tech and UT Tower Shootings John Woods was a student at Virginia Tech on April 6, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people on campus, including his girlfriend, Maxine Turner. Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Woods was a National Merit Scholar who graduated magna cum laude from Virginia Tech in 2007. He moved to Texas to begin his doctoral work in molecular biology at UT-Austin, where he is a National Science Foundation Fellow. John was a founder of Students for Gun-Free Schools in Texas and is now a board member of Texas Gun Sense, an organization that opposes allowing guns on campus while stressing its belief in an individual’s right to bear arms. The Austin Chronicle named Woods Austin’s “best activist” in its 2011 “Best of Austin” awards.

Claire Wilson James, who teaches elementary school in Texarkana, was shot and seriously wounded by Charles Whitman on August 1, 1966, on the University of Texas campus. Shooting from the UT tower, Whitman killed 17 and wounded 72. James, then an 18-year-old anthropology student, spent three months in the hospital and lost her eight-month-old unborn child. Her boyfriend, Tom Eckman, was among Whitman's victims. James, who was a student activist at UT, involved with SDS and the civil rights and anti-war movement, has recently joined in the fight for sensible gun control. Wilson testified before the Texas Legislature in March, in opposition to a bill that would allow the carrying of weapons into college buildings. [Circa Friday, April 5, 2013]

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Hopefully a lot of more leftists will leave and move to other states just because of this. I sincerely hope so.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

It will chill the attempts to assault the innocent who speak out in opposition to BLM and other groups. If the radicals attack, there is now a defense.

[PAR35]

She was raised as a radical, and has never left the revolution. Openly carrying an illegitimate baby was not mainstream conduct on college campuses in the mid-60s.

[the OlLine Rebel]

What does having guns available have to do with suppressing free speech?

[the OlLine Rebel]

Homestly, he did not particularly target any kind of person. That is the gist of your statement, but as with most mass murders, it is happenstance. They just want to kill. They have no other agenda beyond that.

[mumblypeg]

“What does having guns available have to do with suppressing free speech?”

Second Amendment supporters (aka gun nuts) are eeeevil extreeeemists who will use their guns to suppress the Free Speech rights of lone wolf mass shooters, Islamist head choppers, and their campus communist comrades who want to tear up the Constitution and march the rest of us into extermination camps!
Try and keep up! /s