Back in 1995, when the Texas Legislature was debating whether to allow Texans to carry concealed handguns, the publisher for whom I worked posed an interesting question to our state senator.

“Why don’t you just allow folks to carry guns on their hips and walk around the State Capitol?” he asked the late Teel Bivins, a Republican and an avid proponent of gun-owners rights.

I cannot recall Bivins’s response. Perhaps he thought it was a rhetorical question.

But it comes to mind now as I read this essay about gun free zones in the wake of the Chattanooga murders of four Marines and a sailor.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/gun-control-us-capitol-120310.html?hp=t2_r#.VapPCbnbKt8

Why not allow guns into the U.S. Capitol?

Joel Zeitz, the author of the essay, noted that Donald Trump sounded like a mainstream Republican when he said we need to “get rid of gun free zones.” According to Trump, the men who died at the hands of the shooter didn’t have a chance because they were in a zone where gun are prohibited, which of course didn’t stop the shooter from sneaking a gun into the place.

The U.S. Capitol has seen gun violence erupt. People have gotten past security systems with weapons. They have harmed individuals and damaged the structure.

Would guns inside the Capitol stopped the incidents? I have trouble believing they would have worked.

Texas’ concealed handgun carry law, by the way, hasn’t been the disaster some of us thought it would be when the Legislature enacted it two decades ago.

However, this argument that more guns makes us a safer society has yet to be proven — at least to me.