At a CBS Austin debate on Texas’ campus carry laws Monday, panel member Nicholas Roland stood out: He was the only panelist to have survived a campus mass shooting.
Roland, now a U.S. history PhD candidate at the University of Texas, was a senior at Virginia Tech when the 2007 massacre occurred. Noting a cultural bias in favor of anti-carry partisans, thecollegefix.com reported that Roland said the “worse situation is to have no defense back” in a mass shooting. “The police were not fast enough and 32 people died” because no one else was armed and able to confront the attacker, he said.
Roland, who also served in the U.S. military, went on to note the success of campus carry at universities in Utah and Colorado, where it has been legal for more than a decade.
