
 
 A man shows a holster at a concealed-carry permit class. Texas college students can begin carrying guns to class on Monday. (George Frey/Getty Images) 
 
 Earlier this year, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal angered fellow Republicans when he vetoed a bill that would have made it legal for students to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. 
 
 Although he’s been endorsed by the NRA with an “A” rating, Deal said in his official veto statement that “colleges have been treated as sanctuaries of learning where firearms have not been allowed” and he saw no justification to change that. 
 
 In vetoing the legislation, Deal made Georgia the latest in a string of states — including gun-friendly ones — to reject measures allowing guns on college campuses. Last year, 15 states took up the issue, including Florida, Montana and Wyoming. 
 
 Texas was the only state to pass legislation, joining Colorado, Utah, Idaho and five other states in allowing guns on campus. The law will be implemented Monday on the 50th anniversary of Charles Whitman’s rampage at the University of Texas. 
 
 [The loaded legacy of the UT Tower shooting] 
 
 While the loudest debates over firearms in recent years have been about banning semiautomatic rifles, the campus carry movement has played out in the background, at times even more contentious. 
 
 “It’s seen as this Ivory Tower place treated separately. To some people, that’s exactly what they want,” said Matt Nobles, a University of Central Florida criminal justice professor who has co-authored several papers on campus carry. “A free cultural exchange to those people involves no guns.” 
 
 Many gun rights supporters see those facts somewhat differently, Nobles said: “To them, that means people will be vulnerable and need to defend themselves.” 
 
 And to the gun industry, that’s intolerable. 
 
 “The common error made by anti-gun groups,” according to Guns & Ammo magazine, in a list of eight reasons to support campus carry, “is the failure to logically delineate the differences in the motivations of individuals who would use lethal force to be predators and those who are willing to use lethal force to stop the predation.” 
 
 Here is a closer look at various elements of the debate: 
 
 The “good guys with guns argument”: Campus carry advocates argue that the best way to stop mass shootings at schools and elsewhere is for armed law-abiding citizens to open fire on attackers. But how often are so-called “good guys with guns” successful? An FBI study of active-shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013 found that in 160 incidents, just one ended with an armed citizen exchanging gunfire with an attacker. Twenty-one incidents were stopped by unarmed citizens. 
 
 Crime on campus: Pro-campus carry groups also argue that students need guns for self-defense against other crimes. “Neither police (unless they happen to be within screaming range) nor cameras nor text alerts can protect you from an armed thug bent on taking your possessions or your dignity by force,” Students for Campus Carry says on its website. But how much crime is there on campuses? The latest federal study of the issue, released in May, showed that overall crime at universities was down 8 percent in 2013 compared with the previous year. The majority of crimes are burglaries. But certain crimes have been increasing in recent years: forcible sex assaults and murders, which would include mass shootings. Murders totaled 23 in 2013, compared with 12 the year before. (There are more than 20 million college students in the United States.) 
 
 Student and faculty opinion: Most students and campus faculty oppose campus carry. Here are the results of a survey of students and staff at Texas Tech University, one of the schools where campus carry becomes legal on Monday: 
 
 
 
 Texas Tech University survey results about legislation allowing concealed handguns on campus. 
 
 The fear and the reality: Those who oppose campus carry say they fear armed students will pull their guns out during class or in meetings with professors and open fire. A group of UT professors has filed a lawsuit against the university saying they will be forced to censor themselves on controversial topics like politics and religion. Suicide is another concern. But in a report issued last year, UT officials said they had contacted universities where campus carry is already legal, finding “little evidence of campus violence that can be directly linked to campus carry, and none that involves an intentional shooting.” Was there a link between campus carry and increased sexual assaults? No. Was there a link to increased suicide rates? Also, no. 
 
 The issue of accidents: The UT report identified four incidents of accidental discharge: “Two involved a license holder who was openly displaying a handgun to another person; the other two involved license holders who were carrying their handguns unholstered in their pants pocket.” In one case, a bullet grazed another student’s chest. But most of the victims were the gun owners. One shot himself in the foot, the report said, and in Utah, “a student at Weber State University accidentally shot himself in the leg while walking across campus with an unholstered handgun in his pocket.” 
 
 So here’s the question: ||||| FILE - This 1966 photo shows Charles J. Whitman, a then 24-year-old student at the University of Texas. Whitman's killing spree from atop the University of Texas Tower was so baffling to people in 1966... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This 1966 photo shows Charles J. Whitman, a then 24-year-old student at the University of Texas. Whitman's killing spree from atop the University of Texas Tower was so baffling to people in 1966 that then-Gov. John Connally formed a commission to study what might cause a person to erupt with... (Associated Press) 
 
 AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — EDITOR'S NOTE: Before Virginia Tech and Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora and Orlando, there was the University of Texas tower shooting. 
 
 It was shortly before noon on a sweltering Monday morning, Aug. 1, 1966, when architectural engineering student and Marine-trained sniper Charles Whitman climbed to the observation deck of the 27-story clock tower in the heart of UT's flagship Austin campus, armed with rifles, pistols and a sawed-off shotgun. 
 
 He killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others before authorities gunned him down. He had killed his wife and mother prior to heading to the tower, one victim died in the hospital a week later and medical examiners eventually attributed a 17th death to Whitman in 2001 — a man who had been shot and wounded in his one functioning kidney and elected to stop dialysis treatment. 
 
 The killing spree introduced the nation to the concept of a "mass shooting" outside the context of a military battlefield, coining a phrase in American lexicon that's become chillingly commonplace. Dozens of times since Whitman, a lone gunman has claimed large numbers of victims in single shooting incidents. 
 
 Five decades after its original publication, The Associated Press is making available a version of its story, written by AP newsman Garth Jones, along with photos. 
 
 ___ 
 
 A young student and scoutmaster, firing with a Marine sniper's cold and deadly accuracy, killed 13 persons Monday from high in the University of Texas tower after slaying his wife and mother with knife and gun. 
 
 In an hour and a half of terror in the Texas capital, he also wounded 31 persons. 
 
 Two policemen ended the carnage by climbing to a platform above the sniper, Charles Joseph Whitman, 24, and killing him with six shots from a revolver and two blasts from a shotgun loaded with deer slugs. 
 
 Counting the sniper, the dead totaled 15. A sixteenth victim was the unborn child of a woman who was wounded. She was in her eighth month of pregnancy. 
 
 Police said Whitman left notes near the bodies of his wife and mother, slain separately in their homes. 
 
 The notes told of depression, repressed violence and severe headaches. Police said Whitman wrote that he was killing the women to spare them embarrassment over what he was about to do. 
 
 The mother was shot and stabbed to death in her fifth-floor luxury apartment near the campus. The 23-year-old wife was stabbed in the Whitmans' small duplex home. 
 
 Detective Lt. Merle K. Wells said the notes left in each place were different. He declined to release all of their contents. 
 
 Giving partial quotations, however, police said Whitman's notes told of "hating his father with a mortal passion." The notes also said his mother "gave the best 25 years of her life to that man." 
 
 Whitman's mother and father were separated about five months ago. The father, C.A. Whitman, lives in Lake Worth, Fla. 
 
 Shooting and darting from side to side in the heights of the tower, Whitman kept officers at bay. They fired at him with rifles equipped with telescopic sights but could not pin him down. 
 
 Meanwhile, deadly shots from Whitman, an ex-Marine who qualified as a sharpshooter, dropped students and workers as far as two blocks from the tower. 
 
 Ramiro Martinez, 29, an off-duty policeman, heard what was going on, left his steak on the fire, jumped into uniform and rushed to the campus. 
 
 On his own, Martinez crawled and ran to the main entrance of the building, where he handed a rifle to Allen Crum, an employee of the university cooperative store. The two men made their way to the observation deck. As Martinez rounded a corner and saw Whitman, Martinez fired and Whitman returned one shot. Martinez emptied his revolver at Whitman. 
 
 Then officer George McCoy, 26, who had followed Martinez and Crum rushed onto the platform and emptied his shotgun at Whitman. 
 
 One of Martinez's pistol bullets smashed Whitman's rifle and another hit him in the neck. A buckshot pellet from McCoy's shotgun hit Whitman between the eyes from about 25 feet, and police said that was undoubtedly the shot that finished him off. 
 
 At one point, police had attempted to maneuver a light airplane near the top of the tower with a sharpshooter aboard. Whitman drove the plane away with rifle fire. 
 
 Whitman began shooting from the tower at 11:48 a.m. (CST) and was killed at 1:20 p.m. 
 
 The tower, a Texas landmark, is a slender, four-sided structure 30 stories tall in the center of campus. It is Austin's tallest building and its upper stories command a view of the entire city and the rolling hills beyond. 
 
 The observation section of the tower reaches four stories above the 25th floor. The police said Whitman fired from all sides and all levels of the observation area. 
 
 Burst after burst from the sniper's arsenal — three rifles, a shotgun and at least two pistols — poured from the tower, keeping rescuers from the victims scattered about the no-man's land below. 
 
 Police crouched behind trees and buildings and answered with volleys from rifles and shotguns. 
 
 "It was panicky ... frantic," said Diane Casey, 18, a freshman student. 
 
 She and thousands of others on the campus for summer school cringed in terror inside university buildings as Whitman squeezed off his well-aimed shots. 
 
 When the shooting began, students and university workers ran out of campus buildings to see what was happening. As bullets rained they dashed for cover, some screaming wildly. 
 
 With rescuers pinned down by the unrelenting fire, some victims lay unattended for as long as an hour under the 98-degree sun. Finally armored cars used to haul money were pressed into service as ambulances. 
 
 Along the streets bordering the campus people scurried into alleys and hid behind autos and buildings. Police sealed off traffic for blocks as they mounted their siege. Radio stations blared warnings. 
 
 "Everybody was running, shouting, 'Someone has been shot.' I'm scared," said Mrs. Susan Bradshaw, a university employee. 
 
 Police Chief Robert Miles said that until Martinez went into action, there was no specific plan for capturing Whitman. 
 
 "In a situation like that," the chief said. "It all depended on independent action by the officers." 
 
 He said Martinez was so shaken after his exploit that he was sent back home. 
 
 "I'm sure you can understand why," Miles told reporters. 
 
 He said Martinez, a five-year police veteran, had passed four bodies on the tower steps on his way up to the platform. Two of them were women — a custodian and a younger woman. The other two were bodies of the children of the younger woman. 
 
 University Police Chief A.R. Hamilton said Whitman rode to the observation section on an elevator about 11 a.m. 
 
 At 11:48 a.m., university police received a trouble alarm from the tower. Two unarmed security police were sent to the top. 
 
 They started up steps from the elevator and heard shots. 
 
 "Then they saw three bodies," Hamilton said, and they went no further. "They carry no weapons." 
 
 "We told people to stay in their offices ... then we called the police ... I'm not sure whether he killed two visitors or a lady stationed at the top of the tower first." 
 
 Hamilton said Whitman was able to get his weapons to the top of the building by hiding them in a footlocker loaded on a cart and pretending to be a serviceman. Besides weapons, the footlocker contained ammunition, food, water and a plastic container of gasoline. 
 
 The only reported words of Whitman after he gained his firing perch were to Mrs. Vera Palmer, who works in the observatory. 
 
 As she stepped off the elevator, a man in a white shirt said: 
 
 "Lady, don't you dare get off this elevator." 
 
 Mrs. Palmer rode back down. 
 
 The woman she was to relieve, Mrs. Edna Townsley, was later found dead at her post. 
 
 Another of the sniper's victims was Associated Press newsman Robert Heard, 36, a rugged ex-Marine officer who decided to follow two Texas State Highway Patrolmen as they ran across an open space toward the tower. A bullet drilled through Heard's left shoulder, smashing him to the hot pavement. Like other wounded, he was taken to city-operated Brackenridge Hospital. "That guy must be an incredible shot," Heard said. 
 
 Kenneth Schindewolf, 18, of Houston, a campus visitor, said: 
 
 "I got shot at, right close by. I was just dumbfounded ... I flew behind a car. Finally I ran across the street and I could hear bullets hitting the street." ||||| Smart, strong, talented and popular, the young Charles Whitman seemed, outwardly, like a poster child for the “all-American boy” stereotype. 
 
 But as the sandy-haired boy grew up into a tall, athletic ex-Marine, beneath his mop of blond hair, something else was also growing. A brain tumor, nestled between his thalamus, hypothalamus and amygdala, developed quietly to the size of a pecan. 
 
 During his 25th year, Whitman began to complain of headaches, a severe, persistent pain that he later described as “tremendous.” He wrote increasingly troubled journal entries detailing his mental state: “Recently (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.” He paid a visit to the campus mental health center complaining of violent impulses. 
 
 Then, one sweltering August day in 1966, Whitman did something no one expected: He climbed to the top of the UT tower with a sawed-off shotgun, and began shooting. His 96-minute reign of terror killed 13 people on campus and injured over 30, and only ended when he was killed by Austin police. 
 
 Whitman’s suicide note requested an autopsy to examine his brain, because he was convinced it would show some “visible physical disorder.” The shooting — the deadliest college shooting until Virginia Tech in 2007 — left the nation in shock and clamoring for answers. 
 
 Although the initial autopsy was inconclusive about the role of the tumor in the shooting, a follow-up investigation by a group of scientists under a commission requested by governor John Connally showed it could have played a part in the events of that day. 
 
 “The highly malignant brain tumor conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions,” wrote Stuart Brown, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, in the initial 1966 report. 
 
 But not all experts agree on whether the tumor affected Whitman’s thoughts and actions on that August day. 
 
 Michael Koenigs, an expert on brain lesions, said that the position of Whitman’s tumor — pressing against the amygdala — definitely had the potential to affect his mental state. 
 
 The amygdala is a region at the back of the brain involved in emotional regulation and regulation of responses such as fear and aggression. Koenigs said he has seen instances of tumors like Whitman’s which have affected patient's’ entire personalities. 
 
 “It is unlikely that a tumor initiated some type of psychotic rage, but it could have tweaked his personality to be a bit more aggressive or a bit less empathetic,” Koenigs said. “It could certainly affect his emotional state, and it could certainly affect his body’s physiological responses to threat and healthy emotional responses related to aggression.” 
 
 Other scientists, like N. Bradley Keele, an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine, takes a more skeptical point of view. Keele, who studies the amygdala, said that although the location of the tumor could have affected Whitman’s behavior, it is unlikely that it was the sole reason for his actions or even an important contributing factor. 
 
 “Yes, he had an aggressive, malignant tumor in his temporal lobe that could have impacted his bizarre and violent behavior,” Keele said. “However, what is often overlooked is that he came from a very abusive home, and admitted to domestic violence with his own wife prior to stabbing her. I suspect his tumor was little more than ‘circumstantial.’” 
 
 This view is shared by Gary Lavergne, author of the 1997 book “A Sniper in the Tower.” 
 
 “For 48 hours, [Whitman] made serial decisions in a correct order leading to the accomplishment of a goal,” Lavergne said. “To me his actions speak for themselves. If indeed a tumor or anything else took control of him and made him do something he didn’t want to do, when did this ‘seizure’ of sorts start?” 
 
 Lavergne hypothesized that Whitman’s violence was largely due to discontent with his situation and resentment towards his family, and after further research, said he even doubts the existence of the tumor. 
 
 “After my book came out, I met two doctors who didn’t believe he had a brain tumor at all,” Lavergne said. 
 
 Today’s sophisticated brain imaging technology could allow a more accurate look into Whitman’s brain, but Whitman’s brain has been reported by some media outlets as being among the “missing” brains that UT employees disposed of in 2002. 
 
 Even if it were possible to pinpoint the effects of the tumor of Whitman’s actions, the question would still remain whether or not the answer should change the public’s perception of him. If it were proven that the tumor was a cause, would Whitman himself be less to blame? 
 
 “What does it mean when somebody’s brain changes?” asked David Eagleman, a scientist who studies the intersection between neuroscience and law. “This really challenges us to think about criminality in a different way because you don’t choose your genetics, you don’t choose your childhood experiences, your family of origin, your neighborhood, you don’t choose any of this stuff — and yet this is the stuff, your genetics plus your experiences, that makes you who you are. None of us would choose to have a brain tumor.” 
 
 Eagleman said that although the tumor could have been partly responsible for Whitman’s actions, it would be unlikely to change the public’s perception of him. 
 
 “His crime was so horrific — he killed his wife and mother the night before and shot all these random strangers — I think society would not forgive him,” he said. 
 
 Eagleman runs the Center for Science and Law, a nonprofit dedicated to exploring the boundaries between biological causes of crimes and how those crimes are dealt with under the law. 
 
 “What stresses and strains us as people is knowing on the one hand that we are biological creatures, and knowing on the other hand that acts of violence like his are so deep and awful that they feel unforgivable,” he said. “We live in that tension.” 
 
 Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Whitman killed 14 people on campus. Whitman fatally shot 13 people on campus. ||||| AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas will allow concealed handgun license holders to carry their weapons into public university buildings, classrooms and dorms starting Monday, which is also the 50th anniversary of the mass shooting at the University of Texas' landmark clock tower. 
 
 The campus-carry law pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican legislative majority will make Texas one of a handful of states that guarantee the right to carry concealed handguns on campus. Here's a Q &A on how the law will work: 
 
 ___ 
 
 WHO CAN HAVE A CONCEALED HANDGUN ON CAMPUS? 
 
 Anyone who holds a Texas handgun license. To get one, a person must be at least 21 (18 if in the military) and pass both classroom and gun range training courses. There are also restrictions on convicted felons, people charged with felonies and high-level misdemeanors or people with a history of mental illness. 
 
 Texas has more than 1 million concealed handgun license holders. 
 
 ___ 
 
 ARE THERE ANY RESTRICTIONS ON WHERE GUNS WILL BE ALLOWED? 
 
 Generally speaking, the law allows guns in buildings, classrooms and dorms, but rules may differ from campus to campus, as each school is required to map that out. 
 
 For example, at the University of Texas at Austin, where faculty and students vigorously protested the law, teachers will be allowed to declare their offices as gun-free zones, but most will post signs announcing it. Dorm residents can have guns in common areas, such as dining areas and lounges, but not sleeping rooms, where no storage of weapons is allowed. Exceptions to the room restrictions will be made for visiting family members who are licensed to carry handguns. 
 
 At Texas A&M University in College Station, guns are allowed in dorm rooms and teachers must get permission from the administration to ban guns from their office. 
 
 State law still bans weapons from some campus areas, such as hospitals and sporting events. 
 
 ___ 
 
 WITH THE STATE'S OPEN CARRY LAW, WILL WEAPONS BE ON DISPLAY IN CLASS? 
 
 No. The open carry law specifically does not apply to college campuses. Any handguns on campus must be holstered and kept out of sight. 
 
 ___ 
 
 ARE GUNS ALLOWED AT PRIVATE SCHOOLS? COMMUNITY COLLEGES? 
 
 Private schools like Baylor, Rice, Texas Christian and others can ban guns under the state law. Currently, Amberton University, which doesn't allow students under 21 and has a total enrollment under 2,000, is the only private school that has opted to allow guns. 
 
 As for community colleges, they have until August 2017 to allow weapons, giving them more time to adjust for security and other measures. 
 
 ___ 
 
 WHY IS THE LAW SO CONTROVERSIAL? 
 
 Texas has allowed concealed handguns in public for 20 years. Gun rights advocates consider it an important protection, given the constitutional right to bear arms, as well as a key self-defense measure in cases of campus violence, such as the 1966 UT shootings and the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech. 
 
 Opponents of the law fear it will chill free speech on campus and lead to more campus suicide. The former dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture left for a position at the University of Pennsylvania because of his opposition to allowing guns on campus. 
 
 ___ 
 
 WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE AUG. 1 START DATE? 
 
 It's unsettling for some because it falls on the anniversary of Charles Whitman's shooting rampage, in which the Marine-trained sniper opened fire from an observation deck on top of the school's landmark clock tower. It has come to be accepted as the nation's first mass shooting, with 17 deaths attributed to him. 
 
 Among those who urged state lawmakers not to approve campus carry was Claire Wilson James, the first person Whitman shot. She was pregnant and was shot through the belly, killing her unborn child. ||||| It was 1 August 1966, and Gary Lavergne was a 10-year-old boy in Church Point, Louisiana. His family did not have much, but they had a television. When his father, the local chief of police, came home after work they watched the evening news on CBS. 
 
 Professors sue University of Texas and state attorney over campus carry laws Read more 
 
 The anchor, Walter Cronkite, related the big story of the day: a man had climbed the famous tower at the core of the University of Texas campus in Austin and shot passersby with a rifle. The act felt shocking in its scale and its originality. 
 
 “That nut is showing everybody what’s possible and we’re going to see a lot more of this,” Lavergne recalled his father saying. 
 
 “I’ll never forget the way he said that,” he added. “And I’ll be danged if he wasn’t right.” 
 
 Charles Whitman killed 17 people, including an unborn child, and injured more than 30. The UT Tower massacre was the first mass shooting on a US college campus. 
 
 At a time when television news was expanding in reach and cultural influence and melding important moments into shared national experiences, it was arguably mainstream America’s introduction to a now familiar type of crime: an armed individual inflicting tremendous and unexpected violence at a location whose name would come to be used as shorthand for tragedy. 
 
 Lavergne wrote a thorough account of Whitman’s murders, A Sniper in the Tower, in 1997. Today he works in the university’s admissions research department and his office is on the ground floor of the tower. 
 
 “It was kind of an introduction to the concept that a person will do this and he doesn’t give a damn about whether he’ll live or die,” he said. “We weren’t used to that. People who committed crimes, you assume they wanted to get away. Well, not this guy. He went up there and he knew he wasn’t coming down alive. 
 
 “What we do find about the people who do these things is that they’re losers, and by that I mean they’re failures, even if only in their own mind, and they decide they don’t want to live any more but they don’t want to commit suicide. They want to die in a big way, being in complete control and essentially doing the thing they can do better than everybody else, and in Whitman’s case that’s using a gun.” 
 
 A diligent and intelligent student from Florida who at age 12 was said to be the world’s youngest Eagle Scout, Whitman was an exceptional marksman. He joined the US Marines aged 18, escaping his violent, oppressive father. In 1961, he was sent on a scholarship programme to the University of Texas but his behaviour became erratic and indisciplined. Despite being court-martialled for offences including gambling, he was honourably discharged from the marines in 1964 and returned to Austin to resume his studies. His parents separated, his mental health deteriorated and he fantasised to a psychiatrist about shooting people from the tower. 
 
 On 1 August 50 years ago, a little after 11.30am, the 25-year-old took the elevator to the 27th floor, then climbed the steps to the observation deck, 231ft up, and enacted his horrific vision. He had killed his wife and his mother earlier that day, as well as three people inside the tower, one a 16-year-old boy. 
 
 
 
 As Lavergne writes, at about 11.45am, Claire Wilson, an 18-year-old student, and her boyfriend, Thomas Eckman, were strolling through a tree-lined part of the main quadrangle into an open, concreted area below the tower that looks much the same now as it did then, save for last year’s removal of a couple of statues. 
 
 There was a “pop” sound and Wilson dropped to the ground. The precisely aimed 6mm bullet had ripped through her womb, instantly killing the baby boy she had carried for eight months. Eckman knelt down and asked what was wrong. A round entered his back and he fell down, dead, on his girlfriend. The body count quickly grew as Whitman walked around the 360-degree deck, picking targets. 
 
 One was on the edge of the campus, a short walk from the middle of downtown Austin and the Texas statehouse and more than 500 yards from the tower. Crouching behind a Chevrolet as the spree continued, Lavergne writes, Roy Dell Schmidt “stood up to say something like, ‘It’s OK, we’re out of range.’” Whitman shot him dead, through the abdomen. The last victim did not die until 2001, when David Gunby passed away aged 58 from complications related to a wound in his only functioning kidney. 
 
 Wilson was seriously injured but survived. She is scheduled to speak on Monday, when the university dedicates a new memorial to the victims. The anniversary coincides with the implementation of a new and highly controversial law passed by Texas’ Republican-dominated legislature that compels public universities, including the University of Texas, to allow licensed individuals aged 21 and over to carry concealed handguns in most campus buildings. 
 
 ‘It literally was a gun battle that went on’ 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Neal Spelce re-creates his broadcast, a few days after the massacre. Photograph: Spelce 
 
 Proponents argue that the concealed carry law could aid in personal safety. Critics believe that more guns on campus is a recipe for increased danger and confusion. Lavergne said he was asked for his opinion on the issue by advocates from both sides but declined to take a public position. 
 
 Still, he said, “to believe that citizens responding to a crime in progress in 1966 is the same as responding to a crime in progress in 2016 I think is just foolish”. 
 
 Whitman’s spree lasted 96 minutes before he was shot dead by police officers who reached the deck. It was more than enough time for civilians to arrive in pickup trucks with their hunting rifles and try to take him out from below. 
 
 “It literally was a gun battle that went on, people screaming and shouting and dodging and ducking and running and hiding and sirens screaming, gunshots echoing through the buildings on the campus,” said Neal Spelce, then a 30-year-old local television reporter and anchor who broadcast live from the campus soon after the shooting started. 
 
 There were no barriers or officers to stop Spelce getting dangerously close to the action. Robert Heard, a reporter for the Associated Press, was shot but survived. An ambulance driver, Morris Hohmann, was hit in the thigh and transported to hospital in his own emergency vehicle. 
 
 Spelce said Whitman did most of his lethal damage in the first half-hour or so, before the nature of the event was fully clear. Once he was being shot at he had to keep low and had less time to take aim. 
 
 The UT shootings, along with the Watts riots in Los Angeles of 1965, are often credited with inspiring the widespread introduction of Special Weapons And Tactics (Swat) units, enabling police departments to respond rapidly and effectively to serious threats. 
 
 In 1966, campus security mainly consisted of aged security personnel who did little more than oversee parking. Now, in common with other large US academic institutions, the University of Texas has its own armed police department – founded in 1968 and currently employing 89 sworn officers, 43 of them patrol officers. It was tested in 2010 when a 19-year-old student began firing an AK-47 a short walk from the tower, before killing himself in the library. 
 
 Today the Austin police would be ready … they have a Swat team, they have armoured carriers, they have proper weapons Gary Lavergne 
 
 “Everything went wrong for the Austin police department,” said Lavergne. “They didn’t have the right clothing or uniforms, they didn’t have the right weapons, they didn’t have the right communications gear, they didn’t even have the right shoes. Nothing went right. And so a bunch of citizens showing up and firing at a sniper 230ft up, well, that might have been helpful. 
 
 “Today, the Austin police department would be ready for something like this. They have a Swat team, they have armoured carriers, they have the proper weapons, they have the proper training and citizens showing up and shooting back would probably get in the way. And everybody would be in danger when that happens.” 
 
 Authorities are also better prepared for the after-effects of tragedy. In April, when Haruka Weiser became the first person murdered on the Austin campus since the massacre, the university stepped up security and offered counselling. 
 
 “That didn’t happen after a mass murder where 50 people were shot 50 years ago, but it happened after a single homicide just a few months ago. That’s a big difference,” Lavergne said. “Our experience with all these other tragedies has taught us that you don’t just suck it up, you don’t just go back to work and pretend like it never happened. The people in 1966 were no less caring; they were good people, they just didn’t know what to do.” 
 
 ‘I don’t think I used the word “shooter”’ 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest News footage of the UT Tower massacre. 
 
 That feeling of bewilderment extended to those reporting the massacre in what was then a quiet city with a population of less than 220,000. Mass shootings did not yet have their own lexicon. 
 
 “I don’t think I used the word ‘shooter’. I didn’t use the word ‘lockdown’,” said Spelce, who described Whitman as an “apparent madman” during his hours-long live broadcast. “I just made that conclusion trying to figure out who the heck would get up there and start shooting indiscriminately.” 
 
 As he spoke into a push-to-talk microphone tethered to a vehicle that he used for cover, his radio commentary was accompanied on television by a static shot of the tower from an unwieldy camera that belonged to the university’s in-house station. A roaming crew produced dramatic film that was used by the big three national networks in their nightly news bulletins. 
 
 Spelce did not realise it at the time, but Whitman was listening to the live broadcast using a handheld transistor radio that he had taken up the tower. 
 
 “Afterwards you start thinking, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. If I had known that he was listening to me, what could I have done?’” Spelce said. “I answered that in my own mind pretty easy – frankly, I don’t think it would have made a difference.” For one thing, it was not a two-way communication. For another: “The very act of him listening to me describe his rampage? Sick. I mean, that’s a sick guy to begin with.” 
 
 Today the names of victims are often not made public for hours, or even days. In 1966, Spelce gave the go-ahead for a reporter at the hospital to read on air an early casualty list, in an attempt to calm panicked Austinites, many of whom had connections to the university. 
 
 “My logic was [it was] for the greater good,” he said. “Telephone lines in Austin were jammed … people could not get information.” 
 
 A newsroom colleague, Paul Bolton, cut in and asked for the list to be repeated. He had heard correctly the first time: his grandson was among the names. 
 
 This was not in anyone’s psyche. Today if you hear a car backfire in downtown I guarantee you'll see somebody duck Neal Spelce 
 
 “I live with that heartbreak to this day,” Spelce said. “I still think we did the right thing.” 
 
 Spelce suspects that one reason there were so many victims 50 years ago was that people wandered into danger and stood around because they did not have a consciousness of mass shootings that might have helped them quickly process what was taking place. 
 
 “This was not anything in anyone’s psyche,” he said. “Today, if you hear a car backfire in downtown, I guarantee you you’re going to see somebody duck.” 
 
 Still, some details in reports appear remarkably familiar to a modern reader. Friends and neighbours expressed incredulity that such a nice, ordinary-seeming young man would be capable of an atrocity. 
 
 A 7 August article in the New York Times headlined What Lessons in Texas Tragedy? opined: “Whatever the motivation, it seems clear that the way is made easier by the fact that guns of all sorts are readily available to Americans of all shades of morality and mentality … after President Kennedy was shot to death on a Dallas street in November 1963, there was a public clamour for stricter controls over the sale and use of firearms. But proposed legislation was stalled, in large part because of opposition from sportsmen’s groups and the National Rifle Association.” 
 
 Passed soon after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson – a Democrat who was born and raised near Austin. It was a limited compromise bill that restricted interstate weapons sales. 
 
 “We just could not get the Congress to carry out the requests we made of them,” Johnson said. “I asked for the national registration of all guns and the licensing of those who carry those guns. For the fact of life is that there are over 160 million guns in this country – more firearms than families. If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing. If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country. 
 
 “The voices that blocked these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation. They were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby, that has prevailed for the moment in an election year.” 
 
 ‘Far from “snapping”, they’re doing exactly the opposite’ 
 
 My family was once decimated by a lone gunman. Now the horror is resurfacing Read more 
 
 As with any modern mass murder, there was great interest in the mental health of the killer. Whitman had complained of severe headaches in the weeks before the shootings. He was an amphetamine user and an autopsy revealed he had a brain tumour, though whether it affected his decision-making is debatable. Lavergne does not believe that Whitman would have been found insane by a court as a result of his actions: he clearly knew the difference between right and wrong and his decision-making before and during the massacre suggests careful calculation. 
 
 A chilling conclusion is that Whitman and some of his successors may be too easily characterised as crazed when their actions were not motivated by madness but cruelty. “Far from ‘snapping’, they’re doing exactly the opposite,” Lavergne said last Wednesday, standing at the spot where Wilson and Eckman were hit. “Far from losing control, they’re taking control. The ultimate control, because in that moment in time they’re deciding who will live and who will die.” 
 
 America did not suffer a deadlier mass shooting than Whitman’s until 1984, when James Huberty killed 21 people in a McDonald’s in California. 
 
 “A lone wolf individual killing innocent people for no apparent reason shocked everybody,” said Jeffrey Simon, author of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat and a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But there wasn’t a wave and a rash of similar events. In that sense it’s different from today, where each mass shooting seems to be followed by more mass shootings whether or not each individual is inspired by what they have seen before.” 
 
 The UT Tower massacre did, however, promote a national mood of unease: a knowledge that to live in America is to live with the risk, however tiny, that one ordinary day you might be hurled into a scene of carnage that, after Austin, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, Charleston, Orlando and the rest, can no longer truthfully be described as unimaginable. 
 
 The tower’s observation deck will be closed on Monday. It reopened to visitors a couple of months after the massacre but shut in 1974 following four suicides in six years. With new safety and security measures, it was opened again on 15 September 1999. 
 
 “The Tower has become the most powerful symbol of higher education in Texas, and we are proud to share it fully once again,” Larry Faulkner, then university president, said in a speech. This optimistic tale of renewal would be overshadowed by events 190 miles north. 
 
 Later that day, Larry Gene Ashbrook, a 47-year-old whose life had spiralled into bitterness and anger, walked into a concert for teenagers at a Baptist church in Fort Worth. He was carrying two handguns and a pipe bomb. He shot dead seven people and injured seven more, then sat in a pew, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. ||||| Claire Wilson James still remembers dropping onto the burning hot sidewalk near the University of Texas Tower on Aug. 1, 1966, as Charles Whitman’s murderous shooting rampage killed 17 and wounded 31 more. 
 
 Her unborn baby, eight months along, was one of Whitman’s victims. 
 
 On Thursday, James — an elementary school teacher for decades — will come to the state Capitol to weigh in on one of the highest-profile and most emotional issues of the legislative session: whether to allow concealed weapons in schools and in buildings on college campuses. 
 
 In more than a dozen bills that this week begin moving through committees toward possible passage, lawmakers are considering whether to allow trained teachers designated as school marshals to carry pistols in classrooms, to allow permit holders to carry weapons inside college and university buildings for the first time, and to allow judges, federal prosecutors and other officials to carry weapons other places. 
 
 “We need to have a universal background check before someone can carry a concealed weapon,” said James, who now lives in Texarkana. “We have to figure out a way to prevent shootings by not carrying more guns. That’s not the answer.” 
 
 In one of the strongest gun rights states, and at a statehouse where as many as several dozen lawmakers and other officials acknowledge they carry concealed weapons on a regular basis, not everyone will agree with that message. In fact, in the run-up to a Thursday public hearing on school-safety and campus-carry bills, both sides in the debate are adamant about their position. 
 
 “If a shooting breaks out, it’s certainly better to have the possibility of people present who have a weapon and are trained to use it,” said Tim Collier, 66, a retired Houston police officer who plans to testify for fewer limits on concealed weapons. “Otherwise, you’ll just give the shooter time to claim more victims.” 
 
 James recalls in detail the events that left her critically wounded and her boyfriend, Tom Eckman, and baby boy dead. The sounds of gunfire echoed through the UT campus for more than 90 minutes as Whitman claimed victim after victim. James recalled that amid the panic, Austinites were asked to come to the campus with their guns to try to stop Whitman’s rampage. 
 
 “That only made it worse,” she said, noting that as she lay on the sidewalk she recalls hearing gunfire from citizens. “Police are trained to handle this type of situation. I’ve heard from the police that stopped (Whitman) that day that (the armed citizens) actually made the situation more dangerous and put the people who were trying to save us at risk.” 
 
 Whitman was eventually felled by an Austin police officer. 
 
 After being rescued while Whitman was still shooting, James said, she spent three months in the hospital recovering from wounds, undergoing a series of surgeries. If her doctor had not been a combat medic at a MASH unit in Korea, where he treated numerous gunshot victims, she said, she probably would have died. 
 
 Whitman “aimed for the chest of his victims … to kill them, but he aimed at my stomach,” she said. “My beige dress with black flowers on it, they thought it was red, I had lost so much blood. … As I was laying on the sidewalk, I guess I thought, ‘This is the day I will die.’ ” 
 
 Despite strong legislative support for many of the bills — including House Bills 1009 and 972, which will be discussed in Thursday’s public hearing — James said her experience as a victim and a teacher warns her away from them. “Educators are not trained to be armed guards,” she said. “Teaching and law enforcement are two different jobs.” 
 
 Echoing that sentiment is John Woods, a UT doctoral student who was a student at Virginia Tech in 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people, including his girlfriend. He is the spokesman for Texans for Gun Sense, an organization that opposes allowing guns on campuses. 
 
 “Any conversation about school safety needs to begin with experts: teachers and people who have survived these tragedies. Claire Wilson (James) is both,” he said. 
 
 Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct an error in the number of people wounded in the UT sniper attack.
– It's now referred to as "America's first mass shooting," and those who remember it say it certainly felt like the start of something new, strange, and horrible when Charles Whitman started shooting people at random from the University of Texas clock tower on Aug. 1, 1966. In a coincidence that some find chilling, Monday is not only the 50th anniversary of Whitman's rampage, which killed 17 people, but also the day the state's "campus carry" law comes into effect, allowing people to carry concealed handguns at public universities across Texas. A roundup of coverage: The AP answers some questions about the new law, including details on what parts of campuses guns will be allowed in—and on why it was so controversial. Claire Wilson James was eight months pregnant when Whitman—who received a Sharpshooter Badge in the Marines—shot her in the belly from the tower, killing her unborn son. He also killed her boyfriend, Tom Eckman. She talks to the Austin American-Statesman about why she opposes the new law. She recalls that as the rampage continued, Austinites were urged to bring their guns to campus to try to stop him—but that "only made it worse." The university's Daily Texan paper looks at the claim, controversial to this day, that Whitman's behavior may have been influenced by his brain tumor. The Washington Post looks at the arguments on both sides of the "campus carry" movement. Out of 15 states to look at the issue last year, Texas was the only one that ended up passing a law legalizing it. The AP has made a version of its original 1966 story on the mass shooting available. The Guardian speaks to a former newscaster who found himself covering a new kind of horror and to Gary Lavergne, the university's director of admissions research and the author of two books on the rampage. He recalls that in 1966, his father said: "That nut is showing everybody what's possible and we're going to see a lot more of this." "I'll never forget the way he said that," Lavergne says. "And I'll be danged if he wasn't right."