No Legal Standing for Hoplophobic Professors

26 Jul, 2017 by Dave Blount

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Academics who hoped to use their own neurotic fear of firearms to attack the Second Amendment suffered a legal setback earlier this month:

[A] federal judge in Austin, Texas, dismissed a lawsuit by several professors who sought to block the University of Texas from implementing a state law that provides for the lawful carrying of concealed handguns on campus. The case is Glass v. Paxton.

In a filing with the court, one of the professors claimed that the presence of armed students in their classrooms would impede their “ability to create a daring, intellectually active, mutually supportive, and engaged community of thinkers.” The court, however, noted the plaintiffs did not specify what subject matter or point of view they expected to be suppressed. Instead, the judge wrote, they appeared to claim that they would censor their own opinions for fear that an armed student would harm someone.

Yet the judge stated that the professors’ “subjective fear” that an unnamed, unknown student would be moved to future violence because of a differing opinion was based on “mere conjecture.” The judge accordingly ruled that the plaintiffs had not articulated enough of an injury for the court to have standing to hear the case. …

Stripped of its legal jargon, [the] ruling basically states that the professors’ own rank biases against law-abiding concealed carriers does not constitute a legally addressable injury. The UT professors bootstrapped their claims essentially by insisting that their own irrational prejudice of lawful concealed carriers was so acute that it would cause the professors to avoid expressing opinions they themselves believed would be offensive. The court in this case wisely chose not to entertain or dignify this self-delusion.

Imagine if liberals manage to reverse this ruling. Anything moonbats decide “triggers” their neuroses could be banned with the same reasoning. Given the prejudices prevailing on college campuses, heterosexual white males might find themselves banned on the grounds that Preston Mitchum types find them threatening.