Texas Finally Addresses Severe Lack Of Access To Guns For Mentally Ill

Cuz you'll probably get shot

You know what Texas needs more of? No, not stupid Republican governors; it's already had a lifetime supply of those. More guns is what Texas needs. More guns in all the places you can think of, and some other places you can't and don't want to. Like the state's 10 psychiatric hospitals, for example, where they put the people who even gun-diddlers supposedly think shouldn't have access to guns. YEE HAW! 

Before the state’s new open carry law went into effect , guns were banned at those state facilities. No one — visitors, deliverymen and the like — could bring firearms anywhere on campus. Even local law enforcement officers, who were already allowed to bring their weapons into the facilities, regularly lock up their guns before entering Austin State Hospital out of an abundance of caution.

Now visitors can bring guns into the buildings where patients live. Employees are still prohibited from bringing them on campus.

These seems like a potentially fatal flaw, because what if a bad visitor with a gun comes to one of the psych hospitals, and no good employee with a gun is able to stop him? What kind of tyrannical restriction is that?

[contextly_sidebar id="Dnpj7s0JmgZvaBUF9HO5z2yQJQoR6J9q"]Oh there is also the matter of suicidal residents having absurdly easy access to a gun -- thanks for stopping by with the cookies and the Glock, neighbor! -- and blowing their brains out, for freedom. But that hardly seems like a legitimate concern, since Texas has repeatedly demonstrated just how many fucks it doesn't give about the health of its citizens.

Besides, ensuring those instruments of freedom don't end up in the wrong hands is the job of the unarmed, defenseless people who work there:

Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, who supports the new law, said he doesn’t have a problem with legally obtained and licensed guns in the hospitals.

“Its the responsibility of the operators of the facilities to ensure that the patients are not around dangerous weapons,” he said.

So thanks to the brand spankin' new More Guns In All The Places open carry law, visitors to psych wards have the NRA-given right to carry their guns into psych wards, but somehow -- who knows how? guess we'll find out soon enough! -- patients are supposed to be kept away from those "dangerous weapons," because come on, those things are dangerous and those people in the psychiatric hospitals really shouldn't be around 'em!

This seems like a terrific plan in which absolutely nothing could go wrong, until something inevitably does. But oh well. At least the right to carry guns IN ALL THE PLACES will be safe, even if Texas's mentally ill patients won't be. And isn't that what matters most?

[ Statesman ]