Welcome back to the Wild, Wild West.

The days of the Wild West are gone. It’s no longer socially acceptable to challenge someone to draw in the middle of the street or across a crowded bar. However, Texas is trying to go back to its roots…tumbleweeds, whiskey, blazin’ guns and all.

While the 2^nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, I have a problem with Texas’ newest gun (un)control law, which will allow college students to carry concealed weapons on campus. This week, the bill passed in the Texas House, and now will go to the state Senate for approval.

Let me back up and say that I do not have a problem with the 2^nd Amendment, or peoples’ right to hunt, carry a weapon on camping trips where a grizzly may be encountered, or to shoot target practice. I do have an issue with people carrying weapons around relatively safe areas under the guise of self-protection.

The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 was tragic and most likely preventable. Had professors, administrators, family members or acquaintances taken any interest in the mentally unstable student, warning signs may have been there to help prevent the catastrophe to human life. Further, checks into the mental background of a person trying to purchase guns would have indicated a serious history with social anxiety and depression-related disorders.

Would a second gunman at VT have saved lives? Maybe. Would it have saved all the lives lost? No.

The odds of a student perpetrating the same crime that was committed at Virginia Tech are slim to none. There are millions of co-eds enrolled at institutions of higher education across the country, and nothing like the VT massacre had been seen before or has been seen since. So why are we willing to arm more students and set them loose on campuses?

Clearly, background checks into mental stability are not required, so who’s to say students won’t take advantage of loopholes the way lawbreakers do? Allowing gun deregulation on campus does not mean only responsible gun users will bring guns to class, it means all gun users can, and might, bring guns to class.

What happens when another sick student opens fire in a classroom, this time, though, not taking the route of planning a sneak attack (after all, why plan one when you can just carry a gun into a classroom?). From the back of the room, he attacks.

My first question is: How many other students in that room have guns?

Second: What are the odds those students know how to properly use a firearm? (I’ll give Texans the benefit of the doubt…meaning most will).

Third: How many of those gun-carrying students have the wherewithal in a high-stress situation to shoot?

Fourth: How will they know whom to shoot at?

I hope school shootings do not become commonplace to the point of every child needing to carry protection with them to school. I also hope that the Texas State Senate looks into the likelihood of those situations occurring and decide on what is best for the majority of students. I don’t think gun deregulation is the answer. Making guns more available on campus will not deter already sick students from planning and implementing a plan of morbid action. Students who take the route of the VT shooter, and others like him, already have no consideration for the law or what social norms dictate as acceptable. They also have no regard for what others may think of their actions. Further, most school shooters take their own lives at the end of their sprees, making death not a punishment, no matter what form it comes in.

I also have an issue with concealed weapons. It would not make me feel safer sitting in class with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, has a gun. I would want to know who? Where? Why? What’s their history? So unless Texas also is ready to provide each person on campus with that information on each gun holder, I think this law has the potential to create more problems than it will solve. We are not a society made up of vigilante justice forces. (I really almost used a “The Big Lebowski” quote to further make my point. So for my fellow fans, here it is: “This isn’t ‘Nam, man. There are rules here.”) As a matter of fact, we as a society tend to frown on vigilante justice, so why let college students take justice into their own hands?

Bringing guns to campus increases the chances of emotionally charged situations escalating to violent or deadly ones. Places of learning should be safe environments, free of concealed weapons and free of the fear that someone is carrying out a deadly plan in the next room.

Should this law pass in Texas, I certainly hope it does not become the norm.