Posted on 08/01/2007 8:48:49 AM PDT by knighthawk
Rob Steiner, an assistant vice president at the University of Toronto, says he is left "cold" by the thought of "shooting a gun on campus." On this emotional basis, the university will shutter the shooting range at U of T's historic Hart House, ending an 88-year-old tradition. The 400 members of the university's rifle and revolver clubs will now be required to practice elsewhere, despite a perfect safety record. "This is really a values issue ? not a safety issue as strictly defined," Mr. Steiner admits candidly. And the values the university has chosen are those of the left-leaning urban elites who now control the school.
It was not always so. The University of Toronto emerged 180 years ago to serve an overwhelmingly agrarian society. The economies of urban centres such as Toronto moved to the rhythm of farm life. Young men and women from rural homes came to U of T to study arts, science, law and medicine, and brought with them the attitudes that helped shape the culture of the university. This included a respect for guns and marksman-ship: Then, as now, many rural Canadians regularly used guns for hunting, pest control and target shooting.
Hart House has been home to the gun range since it was completed in 1919 at the behest of the Masseys (a family that, it is worth noting here, built a corporate empire on the strength of manufacturing farm equipment). In recent years, the facility has served aspiring athletes such as Avianna Chao, a gold medal winner at the 2007 Pan American Games. In 2002, Hart House spent $20,000 upgrading the facility's security, which has never been breached. Indeed, no one has seriously alleged that the continued operation of the gun club is a risk to anyone.
Nevertheless, Mr. Steiner would have us believe that it is somehow strange or unsavoury for a university to host a club for trained shooters. Such a suggestion is bogus: In Europe it is common for universities to have shooting teams. Guns can kill people, of course -- but so can arrows and javelins, neither of which has been declared illegal by U of T officials. Like all tools, guns have proper and improper uses. Enriched uranium has been known to extinguish human lives as well. Yet -- in full defiance of Mr. Steiner's "values," no doubt -- McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., has been operating a five megawatt research reactor for decades.
Canadian university administrators, more than any other group of Canadians, like to obsess about "diversity." Yet this principle seems to apply only to a politically favoured grouping of racial, religious and sexual minorities. (It would be an outrage if the University of Toronto were to ban from campus, say, Sikh kirpans.) But the same principle apparently does not apply to the thousands of U of T students who hail from households where safe, legal gun use is an accepted part of work and recreation. Among educators who should know better, reason and tradition have been tossed aside for the sake of a fashionable but ignorant gesture.
Ping
This will produce a whole generation of people who are afriad of guns. Pity.
Someone at that university should gather statistics on assaults with baseball bats, and use them to demand that the school stop its baseball program.
In the future there will be armed, trained people with guns and the rest — lambs to be slaughtered.
Pretty soon there will be no one left in Toronto but lefties and criminals.
Well, falls kill lots of people so they need to ban gravity. No more gravity on campus.
And a huge number of college age kids die in auto accidents, so they must ban cars.
No more swim team. Lots`a folks drown. Better off just banning water.
And burns. Ouch! Ban that fire thing!
A surprising number of people freeze to death each year. Pass a law banning cold.
Ooooh! A BUNCH of young people are killed each year while riding bikes. Better ban bicycles on campus, right?
Ok, finally, here is something they don't have to worry about... kangaroos. The kangaroos can stay. WHEW! That was close.
The whole generation that is afraid of guns is already there and well dug in in canada. An entire nation of wusses (save for about 500) with a flying beach towel for a flag, and being bossed around very regularly by a bunch of foreigners in a place they call quebec.
My sister was kicked by a ‘roo.
;-)
Crykee!
I got a Varsity letter in rifle (’65). I wonder how many US high schools still have rifle teams?
My daddy always took me to gun shows.
Little Chuckie is brainwashed.
Typical liberal: the mind of a six year old.
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