No Comment

Photo by Dorian Santiago via NBC News.

Tomorrow's the 50th anniversary of the day Charles Whitman of Austin, Texas, 25-year-old white man, Eagle Scout and Marine, son of a violent authoritarian father, speed freak and college student, killed his wife and his mother in their homes and then went to the University of Texas campus where he gunned down 49 people, killing 16 of them, mostly from the observation deck of the Main Building Tower.

It is also, apparently by coincidence, the day the new Texas "campus-carry" law goes into effect, as I learned from NPR, allowing anybody with a Texas handgun license to carry a concealed handgun on any Texas college campus including, obviously, UT Austin.

The NPR story went to bed too early to incorporate another Austin story, where the 6th Street nightlife district was terrorized early this morning after the bars closed by reports of an "active shooter situation" in the neighborhood. But not to worry, that was just a rumor! The fact was that there were two shooters in completely unrelated incidents, and they were just working out their own private relationship issues, I guess, and only one woman got killed and four seriously injured, so it's just Texas. The one shooter who succeeded in murdering somebody is still at large, but he isn't "active". The Second Amendment escaped unharmed.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.