Month: March 2011

John Richardson notices something about LA’s Police Chief, that makes this move relatively unsurprising. Police chiefs are politicians more than cops. It’s utterly ridiculous and supremely hypocritical to argue magazines that hold more than ten rounds are “clips transform a gun into a weapon of mass death,” and then out of the other side of your mouth argue for your officers to be exempted from the ban.

From the “Can’t have a reasonable conversation file,” courtesy of Dennis Henigan:

Ultimately, this is not just a campus safety issue. It also is an issue involving the core values served by institutions of higher education. It is difficult to imagine anything more destructive to an environment of academic freedom – in which controversial issues can be passionately debated free of fear and intimidation – than students or professors “strapped” as they participate in those debates.

Because, you know, armed people just can’t have a passionate debate without someone pulling out a gun and shooting the place up. This is what these people think about you. How can anyone possibly believe they are fine with the right to bear arms?

From Colin Goddard:

“What kind of classroom situation is productive if you have students thinking about shooting the person that comes in the door?”

What kind of productive classroom situation is it if the person coming through the door has a gun and plans to shoot? And how did hiding under a desk and playing dead work out for you in that situation, Colin? This article points out:

“So many people have told me to my face, ‘If I was there with you that day, I would have saved the lives of students all around you,'” he said. “That almost offends me.”

[…]

“You don’t think rationally,” he said. “You don’t understand what’s going on – it’s absolutely terrifying and crazy.”

I’m afraid I’m almost going to offend Colin here as well, because not everyone reacts that way in high stress situations. I’m not going to beat my chest and suggest that I wouldn’t; that’s not something you know until you’re in a life and death situation, but not everyone reacts by cowering in fear, and many people are completely capable of making correct decisions in those circumstances.

Goddard seems to be fond of saying guns wouldn’t have helped in his situation. He even notes in this article that “his class was slow to realize what was happening. They attributed the bangs they heard from the hallway to construction noise from an adjacent building,” but we know from the Virginia Tech report that room 211, which housed Goddard’s French class, was the third classroom on the second floor that Cho entered. If Goddard was so sure what he was hearing was construction noise, why did he call 911? Why were his classmates barricading the door? Afraid of rampaging construction workers? From the report:

She and her class hear the shots, and she asks student Colin Goddard to call 9-1-1. A student tells the teacher to put the desk in front of the door, which is done but it is nudged open by Cho. Cho walks down the rows of desks shooting people. Goddard is shot in the leg.

Is Goddard twisting the tragedy to suit his agenda, or are we not to believe the Virginia Tech report? It comes down to this: there was time to call 911, and there was time to barricade the door. But there wouldn’t have been time to land several good hits on Cho from concealment or cover? That sounds rife with an agenda to me, rather than a serious assessment of the situation. I can accept that Goddard’s assertion that we ought to do other things, but I don’t see any reason why students who would be able to legally carry off campus, shouldn’t be able to carry on campus.

MAIG sure does love themselves polls. The latest from the Mayors group is being spun favorably, but I think it doesn’t really look all that good for them, mostly because polls don’t matter worth crap in politics. Polls show you what a person is willing to tell a pollster. They don’t give indication of where passion is.

The goal in all this polling is to put themselves in the mainstream on this issue and to put NRA on the outside of the mainstream. The goal is to get mainstream gun owners to stop listening to NRA and start listening to them. This is the only way they’ve been able to win in the past. We’ve done a good job getting more gun owners on board and educating them on Second Amendment issues as a general concept, as the poor showing for gun and magazines bans in this poll show, but we still have a lot of work to do in regards to educating them on what these specific MAIG proposals mean for them.