Comment on a colleague's work

Samantha Johnson is the author of the Blog “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Her recent post, legalizing guns on university campuses, is a very interesting criticism of the "guns on campus" bill. She provided the facts that she wanted to criticize in her work right at the beginning which made it a lot easier to follow her writing .

She took a clear position on the subject and backed her opinion with plenty of evidence. The author herself is a college student. I believe this makes her opinion valuable. She expressed her concern that the stress of student life plus a licensed concealed handgun is a recipe for more violence. I agree with her, I don’t like the idea of sitting by a classmate who is carrying a gun. Allowing gun on campuses not only would not provide greater safety, it would cause greater security issues.

This current Bill did not get passed, but at a great cost. It is unfortunate that Senator Wentworth desperate attempt to pass this bill in the Texas Legislature killed a potentially prosperous bill . This clearly is not what neither students nor instructors want.

Original

With the budget deficit Texas is facing the Government is willing to cut spendings everywhere. There is a debate over how the state can lower the spendings on prison facilities.  There is more than one way to achieve this goal. One approach is to lower the cost by closing down some of the older prison facilities in the rural areas that are more expensive to maintain. This may be the most reasonable approach. However, there is another way to save some money. The states can free the prisoners two or three month earlier, before they fully have served their time. Some might argue that this is a great idea because cumulatively we are gaining significant saving by letting inmates go a couple of month earlier. I on the other hand, believe releasing criminals earlier is like rewarding them it send a wrong message to them. It is as if we are praising them for their poor judgment and horrific actions. A more reasonable way to save money and not send out wrong signals is to eliminate mandatory death penalty appeals. I know it sounds cruel, but if Texas executes everyone on the death row, who pleaded guilty tomorrow that would free up 314 private leased beds. The state pays a-per-inmate per day rate for those private leased beds. One last solution is to send the international and out of state inmates back to their home. Let them serve the time in their homeland prisons where their Government has to think of deficits. Why does Texas taxpayer money has to go toward the maintenance of foreigner  criminals.