Predictably, the Iowa State Daily wrote an anti-gun editorial entitled Gun policies must be chosen by universities.
Make no mistake, the Second Amendment is vital to our nation’s founding principles, and a reasonable defense of Americans’ rights to bear arms should never be suppressed. Unfortunately, the NRA and many of the legislators they support have taken that defense to an untenable extreme.
Let’s replace “Second Amendment” with “Free Speech” and the NRA with the ACLU. Would the Iowa Toilet Paper call the ACLU extreme?
Earlier this month in the Idaho legislature, a bill was introduced by NRA lobbyist Dakota Moore that would do something many NRA members might dislike. It would take away local policy control in favor of a centralized government mandate. As the text of the bill itself reads, “It is the legislature’s intent to wholly occupy the field of firearms regulation within this state.”
Touche, but here are a few facts you’re forgetting:
1. These are PUBLIC universities we’re talking about, thus they are PROPERTY OF THE STATE
2. Lobbyists don’t introduce bills, they may write bills, they may advice on bills, but it’s ELECTED OFFICIALS who introduce them.
3. The constitution overrides state’s rights or local concerns.
Opponents of the bill, which include the chiefs of police of Boise and Moscow, Idaho, presidents from all eight affected institutions, the Idaho Board of Education, university faculty and college student leaders were not allowed to speak at the first state Senate committee hearing of the bill, but made their concerns clear to the Idaho House of Representatives. Their more than eight hours of public testimony, mainly in opposition to the bill, had little effect on the minds of the legislators.
Funny you don’t mention police officers, who unlike chiefs of police, earn their place instead of getting appointed by corrupt politicians. As for the others, there will always be opposition no matter the issue. I oppose tattoos, yet the First Amendment allows free individuals to put garbage on their bodies. Should tattoos be banned if I find a bunch of people to speak against them for 8-hours? I don’t think so.
If the bill does become law, it will harken a substantial win for the NRA, but will hurt those it claims to be protecting. According to Boise State Public Radio, Idaho State University expects to spend $1 million and Boise State University foresees an increased cost of $2 million in order to provide the increased campus security, safety training, metal detectors and other changes the proposed law would necessitate.
We are not responsible for the paranoia of ISU and BSU, if they’re terrified of law-abiding gun owners, I would recommend they see a therapist, but I will not compromise our 2nd Amendment whether they have to spend a million, five million or 20 million. It is ironic that it’s law-abiding gun owners that get them to spend money on security, have they learned nothing from mass shootings?
It may be true that having guns on campuses could decrease the amount of deaths due to mass shootings, since students and faculty could feasibly shoot back, but this is a simplistic notion that only addresses a small portion of gun related crimes.
The crime rate of people with a license to carry a concealed weapon is zilch, as low as 0.58% in Florida for example, which is statistically insignificant. Think about this, if the Cancer rate from smoking was 0.58%, America would have remained a pro-tobacco country instead of the Health Nazi land it became.
The legality of firearms on college campuses, like many other government regulations, should take into account the concerns and needs of those affected. Whether or not college campuses in general would be well served to allow guns is not entirely clear, but in the case of Idaho’s colleges, it is clear that those guns are not wanted.
Do speed limits take into account my need to get from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time? Do speed cameras care about my concerns for privacy? I don’t care if guns aren’t wanted by a bunch of loser liberals. There was a time the Irish were not wanted, Jews were not wanted, Blacks were not wanted. Sorry Star Trek, but the needs of the many do not overcome the needs of the few, or the one. Just like our First Amendment wasn’t written to protect popular speech and religion, our 2nd wasn’t written to protect armed groups approved by the government.
The common sense solution would be to listen to those closest to the problem, but that just is not the NRA’s style. They seem to prefer an indiscriminate, “guns blazin’” approach. Sounds about right.
The NRA has listened to people that have been victimized by armed criminals in gun-free zones. It is the cowardly journalists with their armed security guards that don’t listen to anyone but the jerks who think like they do. It is those cowards that want to segregate the 2nd Amendment, they don’t even want us to keep our guns in our cars, much less on our hips. Yet we’re not going to stop, and while you may use stupid metaphors like “guns blazin,” I assure you’re lucky we’re not literally doing that.
Our NRA is an army of 5 million armed men, not to mention 80 million gun owners. That is a greater number than all our armed forces combined, that is a force to be reckoned with, and if we were as dangerous as you think we are, we would not be writing letters to the editor or paying our lobbyists, we would be guns blazin and you, Mr. Editor, would be soiling himself. You’d see that the pen is only mightier than the sword when you have men with swords or guns willing to defend your right to write stupid editorials. But once those men turn on you, then you better have a gun.
Luckily for you, I won’t be the one turning on you, I’m not a violent man, but I won’t deny that I hope someday armed criminals find you and teach you a lesson about being unarmed and defenseless. And maybe that’s fine for you, maybe you enjoy being a victim, but those few but proud college students that want to keep and bear arms do not wish to victims, and the Constitution gives them the right not to be victims, and I will continue fighting for them till the day I die.
Our 2nd Amendment is forever, it’s never outdated, it’s never irrelevant, and we shall continue to defend it and protect it with laws that affirm it. If common sense is gone, then we’re gonna legislate it. If schools are anti-gun, we’ll make them respect our gun rights.
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