The writer, Diane Roberts is also a commentator for NPR. No surprise given the garbage she spews.American universities are places of art and music, gleaming labs and fine old buildings, famous libraries and fancy football stadiums, old traditions and new thinking, beauty, youth and brains -- about everything you could want. Except guns. Apparently, there just aren't enough guns in those ivy-covered halls.
Never fear: second amendment fundamentalists mean to correct what they see as the sad paucity of weapons on campus. In Florida, a gaggle of true believers calling themselves Florida Carry busies itself arguing that institutions of higher learning have no right to ban guns on their taxpayer-funded property. I mean, why wouldn't you want to pack heat in a class like Organic Chemistry II? Florida Carry's attack is gradual: last year they prevailed in a suit to let students at the University of North Florida stash guns in their cars; this year, they're aiming to force the University of Florida to allow its 50,000 students to keep guns in their dormitories.
Not all 50,000, but why spoil perfectly false argument.
Genius! Imagine: students living six to a hutch, hopped up on Red Bull, vodka, stress, lust, Adderall, Spicy Chipotle BBQ Doritos, MIA and Grand Theft Auto 5. Now add a few .38s and maybe a deer rifle or two. The stakes in those passionate late-night debates over the origin of the universe suddenly get a lot higher.
Most states outlaw the combination of drugs and alcohol, and guns, but don't let that get in the way of your agenda. Do go on.
Of course, Florida is no stranger to gun controversies. George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin for walking while hoodied.
Leave out the unprovoked attack and subsequent pounding a much younger, taller and heavier Trayvon was issuing to Zimmerman.
Just the other day, one guy killed another guy in a movie theatre, apparently for texting during Lone Survivor. But Florida is not alone in this crazy quest to expand gun violence. Lawmakers in North Carolina recently relaxed rules about carrying a gun at public universities. Six states (Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, and Wisconsin) now allow concealed weapons at their public colleges.
Good for them.
| Just out of curiosity, have there been any Adderal and lust-triggered shootings on those campuses? 'Cause I don't recall reading about such things. And really, if the test cases are operating normally despite the presence of scary boom sticks, why would the rest of the country be different? |
| OMG -- joooooos!! You can't trust those people, donchaknow -- they're crazy! |
| Joooos and girls? Y'all might as well give up now -- you're toast. |
What the writer fails to note, and what I will, is that state officials in New York, California, and now, apparently in Maryland, are using their own laws to confiscate guns. Barak Obama may not be confiscating guns but state officials are taking their cues from him and his supporters. As for the second part of that paragraph I would argue for constitutional carry, not just open carry.
The Pennsylvania Board of Governors, which oversees that 14 of that state's pubic universities, plans to decide later this year on allowing guns at universities. In Georgia, legislators would like to see everybody armed, whether sitting in class reading Emily Dickinson or parked in a pew singing "O Sacred Head Now Wounded". Nevermind that polls show 72% of Georgians prefer church to be bullet-free, while 78% say allowing guns on campus is a really stupid idea.
Polls and statistics. When you can't be right on an issue you trot out polls and statistics. They explain everything!
It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. I grew up in a house full of guns. I'm a professor at a university in the "Deep South". Guns are part of our culture. But I don't want to be teaching a class on homosocial triangles in the novels of William Faulkner, while also wondering if maybe that surly kid in the corner has a Colt in his backpack. I don't want to hear one promising student shot another promising student over who saw that hot Tri-Delt first. I don't want to see one of my colleagues hurt by a student who freaks out when she fails her final exam.
You are afraid. I got a great idea, a really novel one. GET A GUN!
I don't want to be as paranoid as those fetishisers of the second amendment who believe if you don't have a gun, you will be a victim of people who do have guns. They claim if those kindergarten teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School had only been armed, they could have taken the shooter down, and that if a critical mass of Virginia Tech faculty and students back in 2007 had Glocks in their waistbands or folding stock AK 47s in their desks, lives would have been saved.
It's not about paranoia, nor is it about prevention of crime. It is about tyranny. The writer is a mini tyrant. The guns are meant as protection against them and their protectors in the political class.
This makes perfect sense -- if you think that real life is indistinguishable from a video game. Barrel-polishers have a vision of the world as infinitely hazardous, pulsing with mortal threats to 1. America; 2. freedom; 3. themselves and their families. The solution is for everyone to have a gun and to use it with the flawless accuracy of those square-jawed, super-fit characters we see on our screens.
That's you, dearie. Most gunowners I know don't care about films except for what they are, fantasies. They do not guide their lives. But as little as the current media affects them, those same folks know that they are responsible for their own protection, which the government cannot and will not provide.
But that ain't real life. In real life, we are overweight, nearsighted, uncoordinated creatures who would shoot the wrong people. Even David Frum, a Reagan-loving, McCain-voting, Republican cautions: "a gun in the house is not a guarantee of personal security -- it is instead a standing invitation to family tragedy. The cold dead hands from which they pry the gun are very unlikely to be the hands of a heroic minuteman defending home and hearth against intruders. They are much more likely to be the hands of a troubled adolescent or a clumsy child."
That's the thing about freedom. It can be messy, bloody and violent. But as messy and bloody and violent as it could be, it beats the tyrannical vision that this writer hold for the rest of the 99.99 percent who pose no threat to anyone.
Gawdamn fascist.