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U.S. federal judge blocks professors' effort to ban guns from classroom

Xinhua, August 23, 2016 Adjust font size:

A U.S. federal judge rejected on Monday the demand by three professors of the University of Texas at Austin (UT AUSTIN) in the southern U.S. state of Texas to keep guns out of classrooms, local TV station ABC13 reported.

The decision came just two days before the fall semester begins at the UT AUSTIN.

The three professors, Dr. Jennifer Lynn Glass, Dr. Lisa Moore and Dr. Mia Carter, were seeking the option of maintaining their academic classrooms as gun-free zones when classes start again on Aug. 24, 2016, but U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that neither lawmakers nor university regents should overstep their power in choosing where concealed firearms could be allowed on campus, the report said.

In response to the denied request, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that there was simply no legal justification to deny licensed, law-abiding citizens on campus the same measure of personal protection they were entitled to elsewhere in Texas.

"The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed for all Americans, including college students, and I will always stand ready to protect that right," Paxton said.

As the second largest state in the country, Texas has allowed licensed concealed handguns in public since 1995. On June 13, 2015, the Lone Star state's Republican governor Greg Abbott signed campus carry and open carry into law, allowing Texans aged above 21 years old at all public universities to carry handguns in classrooms, buildings and dorms.

Referring to the campus carry law as "overly solicitous" and "dangerously-experimental," the three professors pointed to more than 20 shootings on college campuses nationwide in 2015. They also cited the UT Tower shooting in 1966, which killed 16 people, as a reason to ban guns from campus.

The United States now has a population of more than 300 million, but there are some 370 million guns across the country, which has seen more than 200 massive shootings so far this year.

The loose gun control laws have been largely blamed for the persistently rampant gun violence across the country. Many Americans have grown tired of gun violence, calling for an end of gun violence and gun culture in the country. Endi