Liberal Columnists

[marine71]

In my local paper tonight there is a column from Roger Hernandez, a syndicated columnist at NJ Institute of Technology. He's with King Features Syndicate, [email protected].

The column is titled "GUNS ON CAMPUS WOULD MEAN MORE KILLINGS". See if you can find it online as my paper didn't carry it online.

This guy is certain that stricter gun laws in Virginia would have prevented the recent event. (I hate kicking dead horses as this event has been debated ad nausem, but this guy irked me.) This columnist also explained that potential gun buyers should sign a waiver to allow the police to do an extensive background check and mental health history. (As they do in New Jersey, he says.)

He claims that the law of the land was Cho's accomplice.

He goes on to say that some past legislation to allow college students to carry (that failed) was "so ludicrous you almost wonder if it is a parody by anti-gun people trying to make pro-gun people sound foolish." And he suggests that profs could shoot a student on a whim or a student could shoot a prof for bad grades.

I guess what irks me is that this guy, like other anti's, deny the sense and rationale of a pro gun society. They scream for stricter gun laws but they never answer the question regarding their opinion as to how those laws will affect the criminals, who, by their very nature, IGNORE ALL THE LAWS.

Anti's like this columnist strike me as narrow-minded and intentionally blinded. How annoying. But then, if I sound like I'm angry about it all I might have to succumb to a mental health history and that would show up on future police background checks. Grr.

 

[JimmyN]

Debating with them is useless, they will just block it out, as they know they are right and you are wrong. Nothing will change.

It is better to get them to question their own opinions, without realizing it. They probably won't see the logic right away, but later they will think about their answers, and the seed for thought is planted and frequently grows.

he suggests that profs could shoot a student on a whim or a student could shoot a prof for bad grades.

Ask him why he thinks that the profs would shoot a student on a whim. Ask why he thinks a student would shoot a prof for bad grades. He will provide the typical answers about anger, rage or emotions.

Then you get him to question his own opinons. Ask why he thinks the profs aren't shooting the students now. There is nothing currently stopping them from bringing a weapon in, and doing just that. Ask why he thinks none of the students have been shooting their profs over bad grades, they certainly could find the means.

His answers will vary, but the seed of logic has been planted in his own mind, and of his own doing. He can't block you out, because you didn't argue, all the opinions were his.

I had an experience with a relative over teachers with CCW being allowed to carry concealed in the schools. She came out with the same old fear based response that the teachers would start killing the students in a rage, and nobody wants that.

I asked her, "Why would the teachers want to murder their students?" She said a teacher could "go crazy", "lose it", and several similar scenarios. I then asked "What is stopping a teacher from doing that now?" She didn't respond but just looked at me. The face appeared blank, but I could tell the wheels were turning. I continued on, "Any teacher can do that now, and they don't even need a gun, they could just poison the milk and cookies if they wanted." She responded, "Our teachers are more caring and responsible than to do something like that". And I said "That's supposed to be my response, I am surprised you said that after stating that teachers would start murdering their students if they had a gun."

Several months have passed and she has said that after thinking about it I may have a point. She is still not totally convinced, but the wheels are still turning.

 

[marine71]

The problem is, most of the people that have strong emotional responses to topics such as gun control only allow their wheel to turn in one direction and they rarely have the integrity to backpedal when they see the validity of another point.

 

[Chuhhuniban]

The problem is, most of the people that have strong emotional responses to topics such as gun control only allow their wheel to turn in one direction and they rarely have the integrity to backpedal when they see the validity of another point

All too true. There is an appropriate quote from Carl Sagan: "In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."

 

[marine71]

I wonder how much gun crime would actually change if the two sides of gun control worked together and the gun control crowd TRIED blaming the criminals for a start and not the tool. Jeez, I bet that precedent would be effective.

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

GUNS ON CAMPUS WOULD MEAN MORE KILLINGS

Kind of like how the streets in Florida ran red with blood just like the Brady Bunch predicted? Oh wait, that didn't happen.

Guns don't make people evil. Cars don't make people drive drunk. Tall buildings don't make people commit suicide. Stop applying mysterious cosmic forces to inanimate objects.

The only thing that would happen is killing sprees would be much, much shorter. That's for sure.

 

[Henry Bowman]

If we had had stricter laws that infringed on Cho's (and our) 1st, 4th, 5th and 7th Amendment rights it probably would have been even more likely that this incident would have been prevented. But we would rather live free than safely.

 

[ConfuseUs]

OK, that fails the logic test: VA Tech banned guns. Cho bought guns and brought them onto campus anyway. Later he killed a lot of people. How does this show that allowing students to keep and carry guns will make a campus less safe?

Lessee, how did Cho wind up killing 32 people?

Well his family either did not know seriously he was mentally ill or they did not want to taint the family honor by acknowledging that their son was severely disturbed and committing him to an institution. Then they sent him off to college by himself; simply hoping that the experience would help him get better. That's the same as letting loose a Sidewinder near an airport and hoping it doesn't smack into an airliner.

Students and administrators knew Cho had serious and potentially lethal mental problems, but the mental health system failed. That failure is rooted in the left's efforts spanning decades to free the mentally ill from institutions and make it harder to commit people to them as well as to keep the really crazy people in them. Essentially the infrastructure for hospitalizing dangerous mentally ill people was dismantled. The legal infrastructure for committing them was also dismantled.

Finally the background check system did not flag Cho as "should not have a gun" and he cleared his background check and got his guns. I will admit that it isn't too clear to me yet whether being ordered to get treatment is the same as "adjudicated a mental defective". Thus I'm not sure if he slipped through the mental health cracks or the background system failed.

None of these failures points to "more guns on campus = campus blood bath" they point to "Undertreated homicidal maniac on campus = campus blood bath"

 

[BigG]

Liberal calumnists are just trying to make a buck, like everybody else. I try not to read or patronize pubs that publish their swill; I know it's difficult.

 

[Dr. Dickie]

Quote:
he suggests that profs could shoot a student on a whim or a student could shoot a prof for bad grades.

From JimmyN

Ask him why he thinks that the profs would shoot a student on a whim. Ask why he thinks a student would shoot a prof for bad grades. He will provide the typical answers about anger, rage or emotions.

Better, ask him what prevents that from happening now?
The facts that a campus is a gun free zone? So, someone who is going to obey the "gun free" zone law, is going to throw out the MURDER law on a whim?
If that make sense to them, give up. They are mentally challenged and not willing to think, period.