John Lott wants college students to carry concealed handguns on campus if they want.

His book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” argues the safety factor involved if a gunman, as happened three years ago at Virginia Tech, were to shoot up a college campus. Armed students, Lott holds, can defend themselves and others.

Lott was scheduled to address an audience of likeminded University of Texas students — members of the Libertarian Longhorns, the UT Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, the UT Objectivism Society, and the UT Federalist Society — tonight to state his case.

Despite earlier reports that the lecture was canceled after someone made an even more emphatic point on the topic earlier this morning, the lecture is a go. If you haven't been paying attention, a lone gunman fired randomly on UT's campus, took to the library, and turned the AK-47 on himself.

Which way that situation tipped the scales depends on the person judging the weights. Did today’s gunman bolster Lott’s argument for students carrying concealed weapons or did it show the futility of a few students with handguns being able to defend themselves and others in an automatic-weapon emergency?

Good question, and one unlikely to be definitively answered. The dark irony, though, hangs over the UT campus like a black cloud.

Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He thinks people who say they’d step up and shoot a shooter if armed with a concealed weapon are similar to those who say they’d help women and children first off a sinking ship. Pure speculation until one finds oneself in the real situation.

