My simple point is that those who are worried about college kids going shooting (generally) are full of hooie.
Posted on 07/17/2009 11:52:36 AM PDT by Miztiki
Inpire me, please. I need arguments/opinions for and against guns on campus/school grounds for a Rogerian Argument essay.
Check the Guncite website. “Schools and Gun Violence” is one of the sub-headings. Very informative.
Want to hear something funny??? When I was kid (in the early 1960’s), I was required to carry my gun to school!
My Junior High School had an indoor shooting range, and one of my elective classes in the 7th grade was “marksmanship”.
That meant me, and my fellow classmates, had to lug our guns (22 caliber long rifle) to school, several times a month for when we had actual target shooting.
The rest of time the class was about gun safety, history, maintenance and cleaning, etc.
We all thought it was “pretty cool” at first, but after a while lugging your gun to school (with ammo) got to be a drag, especially in winter.
Years later the indoor shooting range and the elective class was eliminated.
But I still find it amusing (and a tad sad) how far things have changed.
By the way, to my knowledge, there was never any kind of shooting accident or incident the whole time this program existed.
This is a good thing. Keep the bedwetters and liberal hand ringers OFF you campus.
In other words, this is how leftist hamstring their conservative opponents in debates, while they, themselves bash the children of their opponents by suggesting rape, incest and attacking the poor little ones born with birth defects.
NEVER allow your opponent to define the terms, or you lose the argument before it begins!
Common leftist ploy.
Don't fall for it.
Heck, begin the paper with redefining the method of argument, declaring the Rogerian method dishonest, as it forces the presenter to admit the validity of your opponent, when the opponent's “valid concerns” lack validity in everyone else’s mind except himself. Then make your unapologetic and determined case.
/my two cents
I appreciate your replies.
Precisely what would a good gun policy look like? Teachers and professors, and of-age students with CCW’s, voluntarily bringing their guns with no oversight or regulation?
That is the only scenario I would agree to, but I seem to be the only one. The few who are for guns want a ton of regulation to the point where the increased cost and extreme limits would not serve the purpose of keeping anyone any safer.
Absolutely. The process for obtaining the permit in the first place is already TOO MUCH regulation in my opinion. But that process should CERTAINLY suffice for allowing permit holders to carry on campus (just as they are able to carry OFF campus).
The oversight and regulation is the responsibility of the issuing authority. Personally, I like the laws that require effective concealment. The fewer people who know I’m armed the better I like it.
No one knows how much violent crime is prevented by the deterrent that law abiding citizens provide by carrying concealed weapons. It is not insignificant however. Violent crime often increases after concealed weapons are banned from certain types of locations.
My wife is under a hundred pounds. She packs a weapon. A month ago she parked in an area where there was an abandoned store at a local mall. As she walked back to her car a group of young black men began following her and making rude sexual comments. They were quickly closing in on her. She turned and took a defensive stance as they got to within 20 feet. She did not draw her weapon, but she clutched her holster purse in a way that she has practiced many times.
She told them that she was old enough to be their grandmother and to get away from her. You don't need to show your weapon to a group of young criminals for them to know that they have picked the wrong victim. They could tell by her stance that she was ready to defend herself and without exception they lost all interest in continuing their harassment and went the other direction. Their augment was good; my wife acts without any hesitation in threatening situations. She has been a victim in the past; she is not going to let it happen again.
I've sing a little spoof on the Tim McGraw song, Don't Take the Girl. It's called Don't Bait the Girl. My wife can and will defend herself. If we were attacked while together it is more likely that she would be the one to settle the confrontation. She lightning quick and the bad guys would probably make the mistake of focusing their attention on me.
Weak small victims are the preferred prey of society's criminal predators. With her guns, my wife is not helpless. But without a gun even a highly trained 100 lb woman is helpless against an armed assailant or a gang. As the inscription on Colt Peacemakers used to say, “Be not afraid of any man, no matter what his size. When danger threatens call on me, and I will equalize.”
The problem is not now, nor has it been the gun.
The problem, as I see it is mainly two-fold...
First, the sense of morality, maturity and wisdom of our society and our youth in particular. Those same 60+ year old freepers will also tell of the responsibility they held as a youth and the difference in the morals in the generations. There weren't gang bangers, welfare queens, divorce was a horrible shame and I could go on.
Second, the laws are not enforced. My buddy got robbed at gunpoint recently by a 19 year old droopy pants thug. Stuck a rifle in my buddy's face. My buddy wrestled with the punk, the gun went off and cut up and burnt his hand. Luckily the round missed him and only killed the laptop he was carrying. Florida has a 10-20-life minimum mandatory sentencing guideline. Use a gun in the commission of a felony, minimum mandatory 10 years. If you discharge the gun, min/man 20 years. Injure someone, min/man life. Obviously this guy should get life, but noooo...the DA wants to plea down to 10. SO what's with the minimum mandatory if you’re not going to stick with it? Rape a kid and get out in five. Kill a guy while driving drunk and if you have lots of money, get 30 days. The law has no teeth and overcrowded prisons are a revolving door of higher college level thuggery education.
Change those two aspect of our culture and we can go back to the days of no regulation needed, as an armed society will be a polite society.
Now, the debate is whether the good guys should be ALLOWED the right they once had freely, because the evil of society has gotten more evil.
In my opinion, the gun is not the issue. Rather, the issue should be how to we turn our culture back to what it once was. How do we instill values and morals and decency in a culture so far gone.
It basically comes down to the balance of power and equality.
You should be able to possess enough power and influence to be able to thwart the worst of the typical threats you could encounter, in your life in society.
A gun equalizes the power between an armed thug and a law-abiding you. With good skills, it can be more than an equalizer.
Start with the morals of the individual’s CHOICE to be either:
1) a victim of violence and the cost to society / family
2) dependent on the College to provide protection and thus driving up the cost of tuition for others
3) prepared to defend their own and other’s lives
The move on to the moral obligation of an institution that restricts the 2nd Amendment rights. Since an individual is no longer permited to protect themselves, is the institution then obligated to provide protection? If so, how much? And what then is the obligation if the institution fails to meet that obligation and someone is beaten/raped/killed BECAUSE they were denied the God given right to defend themselves?
Yes, simply put: they follow the State rules.
Granted, some States have dumb rules, but that is another story.
This is the topic I was given. I have no choice but to write, and be graded on, an essay about guns on campus, in the Rogerian style.
I agree that there should be no question as to our right to keep and bear arms *anywhere*, with no other rules or regulations at all, but that’s not so today, and it won’t get me an “A” to write from that perspective.
I’m having an awfully difficult time with this topic for that very reason. There should be no opposing audience IMO.
As to what the policy would look like, I'd take a pragmatist approach. What seems to work best in states that have the lowest problems with legal carry? I think you might find that what are known as "shall-issue" states, i.e. those in which the state MUST issue a concealed permit unless some provable disqualifying information is in the possession of the issuing authority, tend to have a fairly uniformly low rate of criminality with permit holders throughout the country. It argues that people who take the trouble to go through the applications and qualifying procedures aren't the problem, which is what the NRA and associated organizations have been holding for some time now.
So my suggestion would be only that no special rules apply on campus; that campus rules conform to whatever the local rules are. People uneasy with the notion that the lady ahead of them in line at the bookstore *might* be carrying a pistol in her purse have probably not thought that it's no more or less likely than standing behind that same woman at a bank in town. And no more or less "dangerous."
There is a tendency to idealize a college campus as some pristine environment where, unlike lesser environments, a sanctified protection for difference of opinion, academic freedom, freedom of inquiry, toleration of other opinions all exist, and that somehow the firearms that protect those virtues elsewhere in a free society are to be feared or despised there. One wonders on what basis?
And, too, there is a sort of subtle elitism at work that no real evidence bears out - are arguments in town really settled at the point of a gun on a routine basis? Traffic accidents, political debates, accidental jostling on the sidewalk? Are there really piles of bodies littering the street out there off-campus in the wild? Or is it somebody's hyperactive imagination at work? Or is someone exaggerating in order to sway where evidence will not?
Best of luck with your paper.
That is excellent material to work with. You have just helped me tremendously and I thank you. Thank you!!
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