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By Louis K. Bonham

After almost a year, United States federal district Judge Lee Yeakel has finally ruled on the motions to dismiss a lawsuit filed by three University of Texas-Austin professors challenging Texas’s “campus carry” law. To the surprise of no one except the insufferably deluded, Judge Yeakel has dismissed the case.

His opinion found that the plaintiffs lacked standing. Here’s the nub of the ruling:

Plaintiffs cannot establish standing by “simply claiming that they experienced a ‘chilling effect’ that resulted from a governmental policy that does not regulate, constrain, or compel any action on their part.”

In other words, they didn’t demonstrate that they had suffered any actual injury at the hands of the defendants that would be redressable by a favorable decision.

Here’s the plaintiffs’ claim:

Plaintiffs allege that “classroom discussion will be narrowed, truncated, cut back, cut off’ by the allowance of guns in the classroom. One professor avers in an affidavit that the “possibility of the presence of concealed weapons in a classroom impedes my and other professors’ ability to create a daring, intellectually active, mutually supportive, and engaged community of thinkers.” Plaintiffs do not specify a subject matter or point of view they feel they must eschew as a result of the Campus Carry Law and Campus Carry Policy, or point to a specific harm they have suffered or will suffer as a result of the law and policy. Rather, the chilling effect appears to arise from Plaintiffs’ subjective belief that a person may be more likely to cause harm to a professor or student as a result of the law and policy.

Not surprisingly, the court found that even accepting this claim as true was a legally insufficient basis for standing. Indeed, while the court didn’t mention it, the professors’ claims that they actually and truly feared their students appears to have been factually bogus in the first place.

As I previously reported, in speaking at the infamous “Cocks not Glocks” demonstration on the UT campus, plaintiff professor Mia Carter admitted that “I’m not afraid of my students. I’m afraid for my students.” Professor Carter should count herself lucky that Judge Yeakel didn’t publically call her out for her disingenuous position to the contrary.

None of the legal findings in Judge Yeakel’s ruling should come as a great surprise; indeed, he properly took the narrow procedural way of disposing of the case rather than addressing the actual merits (or lack thereof) of the lawsuit. Nevertheless, despite some less-than stellar-lawyering by UT’s counsel, this case was a farce from the beginning. The only surprise is that Judge Yeakel took as long as he did to throw it out.

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62 COMMENTS

  1. So, to be clear, in the future before you file a lawsuit, you had better be cock-sure of what you’re doing!
    Don’t pussyfoot around. Thrust forward with your beliefs! Wording must be forth coming. Be a cunning linguist to lick your foe in all areas! Bald face lies won’t work. Show the naked truth.

  2. Leftist …”Cocks not Glocks’…Pussy Hats….Antifa…..

    Please keep it up…….Tha’s why we have Trump.

  3. I am usually pretty good at reading dumb and crazy but I have no idea of how the “cocks not Glocks” works in those peoples head.

    • It’s supposed to be an semi-satirical play on the “all gun-nuts are just compensating for small d*cks” talking point… see: we don’t need guns because we carrying around big floppy dildos.

      I never got the small d*ck thing either. My mom and wife both carry guns and they have huge dongs.

    • It’s an established, sometimes-false dichotomy that contemporary neo-lib values are sexier than whatever they’re against. It’s not undeserved, but it doesn’t apply to guns. Liking guns can be part of secular, libertine values. That hasn’t always been the case, but it’s happening now and it’s a natural fit. John Ross was kind of visionary. He should have got someone else to write the smut in Unintended Consequences, to make it not cringey, but he had the right idea.

      • “Sometimes-false”? Have you seen the latest generation of trigglypuffs?

        One of the things I like about the right wing is that we actually care about maintains a minimum standard of personal appearance. One of my pet projects is developing an equation for the relationship of hotness to SJW crazy. There seems to be one, but I don’t think I’ve locked down all the variables yet.

        • Funny point, but to answer first off meh; both sides have their better and worse looking people. Second I’m talking about the values, not just the people. I’m no fan of the grungy blond, straight-hair dreadlocks and scaly stretched earlobes, but there are sexy values other than keeping a neat appearance, and the right has some platform items that are like a 150 psi cold shower.

    • Perhaps it is my Aspergers, but it had just looked like they had a phallic obsession to me. I would have been very confused, had I been confronted by one of those people.

      • It’s because the left is always projecting what they are into opponents. Antifa is fascist, Dems are racist, and womans lib 2.0 has hurt women. Now to end with a profound quote:

        “How many inches does it take to please a woman?”

        “How many?”

        “What do I care, I’m not a woman.”

    • I seriously think the whole thing was gureilla marketing for sex toys. Get those college age feminists a free sample of relief from their sexual long darkness. Someone somewhere is a marketing genius.

    • I believe it started by pointing out that it’s ridiculous that guns are legal on the UT campus, while dildos are banned.

      I agree, 100%. They should legalized dildos on campus.

    • Originally, it was based on the supposed “fact” that sex toys are illegal to carry on campus under Texas law but guns are not. From there, however, it just devolved into the equivalent of an adolescent fart joke coupled with a primal scream that there was nothing they could do to stop campus carry. Once they started to get some media attention, the real weirdos came out of the woodwork. (Click the link in the article only if you have a good supply of brain bleach!)

    • “Cocks not Glocks.”

      They don’t want people carrying Glocks. The reason is they think they’ll be attacked by Glocks. Logically, what they want to be attacked by is cocks.

      So maybe the appropriate response to someone with a “Cocks not Glocks” sign would be, “How would you like that, ma’am — right here in front of everyone, or shall we go somewhere more private?”

      • Pro Tip: Don’t pork crazy. Don’t even offer to pork crazy. Crazy might take you up on it and you know where it’s been.

      • FOUL ON THE PASSER…
        4TH RULE VIOLATION…
        NEVER STICK YOUR D*CK IN CRAZY

        *makes meaningful hand gestures in the air while talking*

    • It rhymed!

      And they could draw obscene pictures with the slogan underneath it!!!

      Just like in junior high.

      That’s about the speed of college today, folks…

  4. If these ‘Professors’ at that university are that wigged out by the idea of a *proven* law-biding student may be carrying a firearm, they have two choices.

    1 – Work on their obviously lacking coping skills, or,

    2 – Submit their resignation.

    Choose one or the other…

  5. Funny how the real limiter of free, open, diverse intellectual discussion is not firearms but the liberals themselves. They certainly fail to see the irony of claiming a stifling of a “daring, intellectually active and mutually supportive” discussion by firearms has come to reality in the form of censorship and violence expressed by liberals rioting at the idea that those with views other than theirs should be allowed to speak at their universities.

    • Yep that struck me too! I doubt these teaching enabled hacks would have any concept of an intellectually engaged discussion of any kind that didn’t agree with their bias. To them daring means agreeing with them and mutually supportive means you better follow the group think or expect a poor grade.

  6. Well you’d think all those arts majors could draw a penis better than that.

    Radical Feminism. Not even once.

    • It is pitiful, they’re supposed to have an important message but can’t manage more than 30 seconds with a sharpie for the sign. It’s like, hey, if you don’t care why should I? I’ve spent hundreds of hours composing my ideas on gun rights, and I’m supposed to be moved by scribbles?

        • …who apparently have never even seen their subject matter in a dirty movie.
          I mean seriously, that looks like a lawn dart that somebody left too close to the bonfire.

    • “Well you’d think all those arts majors could draw a penis better than that.”

      You’re assuming they have had direct personal experience with one in the fist place.

      Kinda hard to draw what they have never seen…

      *snicker*

      • First place, not fist place.

        EDIT – On second thought, my fist would be superior to anything they have to offer…

        • No, you had it correct. Experience with one in the fist place… that is where you put ’em.

    • And there in lies the rub, if they are feminists, they often are women’s studies majors.

      As an art major, my female art major colleagues are often far more directly involved in field studies on “cocks not glocks” than their feminist sisters.

      I’m sure they could have put in more effort in representation had they included a higher degree of verisimilitude, but the very women who would know most about it were probably busy with their healthy field studies.

  7. To the left, the 2nd amendment is a “back of the bus” amendment. They acknowledge it, grudgingly, and will promise most vociferously that they “dont want to take your guns away”.

    Except they most certainly do, and will do so with incremental policy like California where half the state basically hates the other half and wants to disarm them and drive them out as fast as they can. They’re doing a very good job of that by the way.

  8. Beyond the judge’s no standing ruling, these profs have no standing because their existence to bring the suit demonstrates their claim is invalid. They’re alive, nobody shot them, brandished, threatened, or even admitted to carrying in their classrooms. They’d have standing were this case brought by these professors’ assigns and heirs.

    /Just to be clear

    There is no “call to violence” here, nor suggestion of “violence” as a solution, nor even observation of violence in my comment.

    The actual words — pay attention, I know this is hard — note that violence has not happened. The consequence foundational to their claim — that people who concealed carry in classrooms are prone to violence or threat because of, or aided by their carried arms — is absent.

    The only people claiming violence might happen are the plaintiffs. Not that pointing this out will help in the least with people who got all wee-wee’d up about NRA-Dana’s patter over a video montage of leftie, anti-gunner, “antifa” violence.

  9. I call for universities to ban “one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters” from their classrooms, as I’m all ascared I might get et. See you in court.

  10. If I was that girls parent I would cut her funds off and tell her to get a job. It’s obvious that paying her way to school is a money pit.

    • Perhaps they know and are cool with it. Some people exist primarily to stagger through life consuming resources and experiencing a spectrum of joy, which on occasion includes taking part in a slightly risque, morally gratifying protest.

    • Trust fund – see also the “protesting” maggots at the G20.

      Why young’uns should be forced to buy their own higher “education”, no grants, loans, trustfunds. You’re not doing the kid any favors by paying his/her way thru college. Like any freebie it doesn’t mean 10% of what you earned/bought yourself.

  11. This is likely a result of the Bush-Clinton effort to get everyone to go to college. Some just don’t belong there.

    • Most people don’t belong in college. If you see the “quality” of “engineers” alleged “tier 1” schools are turning out these days, you’d cry. Most of them couldn’t engineer their way out of a paper box. I think the concept of “perfection is the enemy of good enough” was dropped from the curriculum at some point.

      • Decades ago, one William Nye had high enough grades as a ME BS that he was hired straight out of college by Boeing. He was so good at his job that he relied on being a stand-up comedian scant years later. He is popularly acknowledged as a leading world scientific figure to this day because he briefly had a career as a half-assed Mr. Wizard replacement.

        • Yeah Bill Nye was always a tool. You just needed the right education to spot it. Every time I “debate” his fans, I point out that I graduated a far better engineering program and unlike his, my post-graduated degrees are not honorary.

          I personally hate celebrity “science” it gives their personal pet projects a weight that their scientific merits just don’t deserve.

    • it’s a brilliant marketing scam to get kids to pay $100,000 for a useless degree in afro-feminist studies.

      no wonder these dummies get all pissy about paying back their student loans; starbucks doesn’t pay that well!

      • You would think “afro-feminist studies” would at least teach the gals to weave fancy baskets or to carry things on their heads. Something useful/marketable.

  12. Actually waiting a year makes sense: it provided the plaintiffs an opportunity to document the alleged harm. By waiting so long the judge allowed it to became utterly plain that the claimed harm is just fantasy.

  13. These libtards are just silly. Or maybe we should call them, “factophobic”.

    About 90% of mas shootings occur in “gun free” zones. concealed carry just evens the field a little bit.

    • In your dreams. These three have already practically been canonized in their departments. Sitting in the cheap seats at the preliminary injunction hearing, I got to hear a lot of the groupthink of the faculty that supports them . . . let’s just say the delusion is truly strong with this bunch.

      My suggestion is that the appropriations committee of the Texas House cut the budgets of the departments employing the plaintiffs by an amount that just happens to be 5x the amount that the State had to expend to defend this POS lawsuit. Bring the pain . . . .

      • “These three have already practically been canonized in their departments.”

        Actually, “cannonizing” them seems like a pretty good idea.

  14. I would think that “daring, intellectually active, mutually supportive, and engaged community of thinkers” is not predisposed to killing each other over some issue discussed in a classroom.

    Clearly my understanding is flawed, but…

  15. Does this mean that liberal law suites can’t be based on fantasy devoid of facts or actual occurrences? Maybe the folks at UTA should replace their “Cocks not Glocks” placards with “Facts not Fantasy”.

  16. The great thing about feelings is they change with the breeze and they never really have to be justified, which makes them an excellent foundation for public policy.

  17. In any state where concealed carry is legal (virtually all of them), any professor who says (s)he is too afraid to function effectively when concealed guns are allowed on-campus, is either a liar, or is in need of psychological help. If guns on one side of the street (on-campus) are so terrifying as to impede his/her ability to function effectively, either socially or in a work capacity, then they MUST (unless you are lying) also and equally, impede the ability to function effectively on the other (off-campus) side of the street. People who are so frightened of something that they cannot function effectively in their work or social lives, are typically diagnosed with one or more “phobias” (in this case “Hoplophobia”). It is impossible to have such a debilitating fear only ON-campus. So if a professor is too frightened to function effectively on-campus, (s)he must also be too frightened to function effectively off-campus, say at the grocery or movies, where citizens may be carrying concealed guns. This sort of disorder is very treatable with appropriate psychotherapy, and such treatment would greatly improve the person’s overall quality of life. One would think this would be sufficient reason for the person’s supervisor to suggest such help for any subordinate who reports experiencing such an irrational phobic reaction to anything, including guns.

  18. The asian girl in the picture looks like the alien at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers screeching and pointing at a non-alien. And the pathetic dude in the orange t-shirt is tagging along in worship mode just praying he gets laid.

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