Haven't checked the status in the last little while, but Texas either has approved or is about to approve a law allowing students, faculty, and administrators to carry concealed weapons on campus.

I think that's a dangerously wrong idea. For example, Texans already are allowed to carry weapons in their vehicles. So how has that worked out?

ABILENE, Texas -- Chris North has been identified, officially for the first time, as the man who shot and killed Austin David on Feb. 9 during what the Abilene Police Department called a road rage incident.

A lifelong resident of Abilene, North, 44, was identified by attorney Sam Moore, who was hired by the family to represent North.

Moore told the media during a news conference in his office Wednesday that North fired his gun in self-defense. He said that David "had already pulled a gun and had threatened to kill him.

Forget insanity. Focus on hormones. I taught college for nearly 4 decades, and I can guarantee that college students will fight among themselves ... especially when they're drunk. Guns weren't permitted on our campus, so the fights I learned of almost always involved fisticuffs and nothing more. I wonder how many on-campus murders I'd have seen if students had been carrying guns? If both sides in a conflict had started shooting, multiple victims would have died.

Insanity? That's what's reflected in the laws encouraging citizens to carry guns. The men who support this kind of legislation (including men now serving in Congress) must see themselves as civilian incarnations of the fictional character Dirty Harry.

Instead they should imagine what it might be like to confront a real-life, non-fictional bad guy like, say, John Wesley Hardin. Hardin claimed to have killed 42 men. Might not have been that many, but it was a lot. And all of those men were carrying their own guns. Or, say, Clyde Barrow. He killed plenty of fully armed police officers before he himself was killed in an ambush by a numerous group of lawmen.

[Cross-posted from Scarabus. Illustrations included there.]