Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Recently this author has sent two missives describing the delusional nature of the opposition to licensed carry of concealed handguns in Texas. The point of this was not to point out the desirability of getting an HCL in Texas or any other state. Rather it was to point out the uncompromising nature of certain students‘ and professors‘ insistence that we all go “socially naked.” This insistence has insisted on being fact free.

Essentially they claim that students are too immature to carry guns on campus, and that there is no way to know when one of these licensed gun carriers will lose it during academic debate or arguing with a professor over grades. Also, the opponents of licensed conceal campus carry (CCC) express concern that more guns on camps is just a Bad Thing.

This last argument can not be refuted. It is an axiom in their thinking. It is “true” and can not be proven otherwise. To get them to change their mind on this point would mean totally change their attitude towards guns and perhaps other issues. It would require an almost religious conversion. Have fun debating gun control with them, but don‘t expect anything other than any enjoyment this debate gives you.

As for the immaturity issue, please note that with the exception of active duty military and honorably discharged veterans, you have to be twenty one or older to get a license. The brains of 21 year olds are further along the myelination process than those of 18 and 19 year olds. At least physiologically, if not as a consequence of greater life experience they are more likely to be more mature than their younger classmates. Of course, most license holders are even older.

As for the losing self control issues, this goes to back to maturity. Also, a person who has the couple of hundred bucks to get a license ( required class and written test tuition, range fee and ammo for proficiency test, possibly rental of gun if you don‘t have one to take test, license fee, and fingerprinting.), and nothing better to spend their money on is probably employed or taking a sabbatical from work to go back to school. This is not the type of person who remains a delicate flower ready to go to pieces when exposed to “trigger words” in an academic debate.

Licensed gun holders in Texas, as well as most other states, are less likely to engage in violent crime than the general population and in fact have a lower violent crime rate than law enforcement officials (cops). Not the type that go nuts and shoot up a class room or office.

Instead of choosing as most people libertarian or not, to either not go heeled or engage in constitutional carry, legal or not, these people were good little boys and girls and spent their time and money to get a license from the state to carry a pistol. This sounds like the kind of people with a greater than usual respect for authority, not the type to throw down on a prof in a quarrel over grades.

Everything about the type of people who get licenses to carry pistols indicates they are not the loose cannons college supporters of gun control claim. Yet even these relative paragons of virtue (or at least willingness to submit to authority) scare our progressive friends. One has to wonder why. This last is a rhetorical question, of course. These professors and students who insist that everyone else go socially naked are the type of people who are capable of murdering other people who intellectually disagree with them, who wish to use fore to achieve conformity of ideas. They see themselves in everyone else. Even a person who is more mature and law abiding than average cannot be trusted to be different than their totalitarian, potentially murderous selves.

So if it seems I‘ve been promoting getting carry licenses I apologize. I have been attempting to condemn those who are so bound by their fear that the rest of us are authoritarian monsters like themselves they believe that no one, even persons who go out of their way to conform to the law, can be trusted with arms.

How much do they hate and fear everyone else‘s freedom?