Aside from the usual suspects, there’s one big impediment to allowing students and faculty to keep and bear arms on campus that will surprise most WND readers: The NRA.Then again, perhaps not.
“[W]e believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools,” Association Executive Vice President and WND Books author (“Guns, Freedom and Terrorism”) Wayne LaPierre proclaimed in his address to members at the 1999 Annual Meeting. “That means no guns in America's schools, period ... with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.”
But that was 8 years ago. Perhaps times have changed?
Current NRA president and new WND “On Target” columnist Sandy Froman suggested a possible shift shortly after the Minnesota school shootings in 2005, recommending “we need to look at all options.”
The following week, after a “clarification” to the press by LaPierre, Froman backed off, stating “The only people that ought to have firearms in the schools are law enforcement and trained security personnel.”
Will the massacre of the defenseless at Virginia Tech finally prompt LaPierre & Co. to admit that gun control laws don't work, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed anywhere? I don't know. Being a mere Life Member, they won't answer me. And while others in the gun rights community, from smaller groups to bloggers, are calling for the obvious, our cautious ostensible leaders "will not have further comment until all the facts are known."
Perhaps you, Mr. Farah, will have better luck eliciting an answer.
David Codrea
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A Letter WorldNetDaily Didn't (Wouldn't?) Print
In response to "How to Prevent Next Massacre":
Commented twice on this tripe, including this URL for your letter. The second time, I was even polite and used no insults. Both times, my comments were deleted.
ReplyDelete"Authorized journalists" afraid of the facts? Who'da thunk it?
Four deletions total. So it isn't being abusive, it isn't including links, it MIGHT be the use of a pseudonym, but all in all we have no idea what standards the site's maintainers are attempting to apply. Except that their fear is painfully obvious. Smellable, even.
ReplyDeleteOne of the folks in that comments thread followed up with me via e-mail. I'll include here my inline responses to his statements. Sorry for the crummy formatting.
ReplyDelete======================
Before responding to each of your points I want to draw attention to
the fact that we are arguing about the effects of laws. We are not
even touching on the principles of laws.
Put (hopefully) more clearly:
A. Prohibitionists have no Constitutional right or power to tell me
that I cannot have a magazine with a capacity of greater than 10
rounds, unless you are going to also tell me that my rights are
derived from the government and that my rights exist at the pleasure
of lawmakers (who will of course be exempt from these rules).
B. Higher magazine capacity can be a boon for "good guys" as easily as
it can be for bad guys. I'm sure any proposed magazine capacity limit
would not be applied to police?
Crime statistics are not the ultimate arbiter of what is right or
wrong legally or morally. Just because someone shoots up a place with
a 30-round magazine (I do not know if this has actually happened) does
not mean that there is any justification for banning those from
non-LEO ownership.
On 4/18/07, you wrote:
> There are a million scenarios that can be construed to defend any point...
> like the home invasion one. Just because I can come up with a scenario to
> defend the sale of grenades, fully automatic weapons, or even claymore
> mines, it does not make my argument a good reason to justify the
> legalization of such things. Of course, these types of arguments can span
> any number of unlikely scenarios, and they often ignore what happens the
> majority of times.
Grenades and claymores don't make particularly good directed-fire
defensive weapons, I don't think. Even if they were legal, I'd rather
have a firearm for this purpose. On the other hand, if I am jumped in
an alley by 3 thugs I want to know that I have enough ammo to be able
to provide enough lead to all of them, if necessary, without hearing
clicks after I find out there's a fourth one behind me. (Not even
counting any missed or ineffective shots.)
> Of course, I agree with you that people should be able to defends themselves
> from home invasions; however, I believe that allowing the sale of high
> capacity magazines will end up hurting more people than saving.
You can believe that if you want. I don't believe it makes any
difference. And to take it to a further extreme, if we really wanted
to maximize public safety (or at least make ourselves feel like we
were doing so) we would institute martial law. But there's a thing
called "freedom" that gets in the way, and one bad apple fortunately
is *not yet* all it takes to destroy that freedom for the entire
country, if cooler heads prevail.
> "Also, if you think that a weapon "causes" someone to win or lose fights in
> and of itself, I again call your training and mindset into question. But I
> guess that is why we are having this argument to begin with."
>
> The word "causes" was not meant the way you understood it.
I had a feeling you didn't mean it like that, but I think it's
important to point out the choice of words because many people really
DO think that way.
> just because you haven't heard of the "death-grip" issue does
> not make it a training problem either. Maybe it just never came up in the
> conversations you've had, and having seen it has more weight that not having
> heard of it.
I can't disagree with the above statement, however, I will endeavor to
ask around about it and see what turns up. For the record, I
deliberately tried to cause this problem with two Glocks tonight and
was still able to insert a magazine until it locked in place. The
only way I could squeeze hard enough to prevent the insertion was by
squashing them against a table from left-to-right, which is not the
direction in which hand pressure is applied anyway.
Frankly I don't even remember why we are discussing this point, but
moving on....
> If people don't have the access, or as much
> access, to weapons that can facilitate an incident like the one at Virginia
> Tech, it will be better than if they did.
First I have to say that creating such an environment is probably
impossible. Second, if one or more students, faculty, or whoever, had
been armed the odds would have changed dramatically and we wouldn't
even be debating this point. Third, criminal misuse of something
leading to barring legal use of it by the law-abiding does not
logically follow. It makes no sense to violate my rights because of
what this killer did.
Also, I would not dare to estimate the number of these magazines that
are out there right now in perfectly legal, proper use by average
Americans.
> It is my opinion, as well as that
> of many officers that I have worked with, that having high capacity
> magazines for the general public brings more harm than good.
Of course I fully expect many LEOs would favor retaining the high-cap
magazines for themselves and for other government officials. This is
the political trend today, to remove rights from citizens and hand
power over to government. And this is America? Shameful.
> PS While I have disagreed with some of your points, I thank for keeping it
> clean, calm, and collected (unlike the Tired of Lies).
Ditto. I enjoyed it. I don't know that much about you and I suppose
the feeling is mutual, but it was a good chat. My only agenda is to
see to it that Americans retain their Constitutionally guaranteed
liberties, and I see this move as a knee-jerk attack on those
liberties.
I view the solution to this "problem" as being two-pronged:
1. Retain personal liberties while encouraging the law-abiding to
obtain equipment and training necessary for self-defense, and
2. Cultivate a stronger culture with the willingness to fight back against evil.
I reference #2 above because I find it shameful that, from what I am
able to tell from this incident, that despite being forcibly disarmed
by school rules nobody was willing to attempt to overtake this
lunatic. That REALLY needs to change, especially in what may be the
dawn of an age of terrorism.
Interesting.. I just refreshed that page and lo and behold, 2 or 3 of my other responses to some of these idiots have been deleted.
ReplyDeleteI am speechless.