Four weeks before the midterm elections, the event allows Bush to return to the politically safe issue of education and child safety. But the federal role in making schools safer is limited because education remains mainly a local matter. The White House chose to host a national sharing of ideas, hoping to seize a moment when people are focused on preventing violence.
Well actually, there is one way that federal government can make a huge difference in ensuring school safety, as the editors of the Washington Post point out:
We appreciate the president's resolve to gather experts, including those in law enforcement. Yet when it comes to gun legislation, the experts are ignored as the gun lobby scores victory after victory. Consider that President Bush signed a law that permits the destruction of gun check records within 24 hours (despite criticism from a Government Accountability Office report); let the federal assault weapons ban expire (despite evidence that it lowered the rate at which assault weapons were used in crime); is backing bills that prevent law enforcement from putting corrupt gun dealers out of business (over the objection of police groups); and restricted the ability of police to use crime gun trace data (again despite police objections).
Once again, when it comes to the safety of our children in schools, and despite the fact that these mass killings and acts of violence were all committed with guns, talking about guns is somehow off-limits.
5 comments:
Guns don't kill children; people kill children! We must ban people!
I'd be okay with that too.
Perhaps we're just focusing on the bad stories about guns because we're liberals. We should focus on more positive gun stories to give a balanced view. Stories of the countless people who bravely defend their homes by killing intruders, even when it's their own family. Besides which, the obvious solution to the wrong people having guns is to give everyone guns!
When will the anti gun media post their references for all the studies that they claim support their reasons for the gun bans? They use their own half baked BS to support their claims! Why can't people insist that law enforcement officials enforce the gun laws that are on the books? We don't need new laws when the existing laws are ignored! Feinstein and Kennedy, et. al., you don't get it do you? The criminals don't care one damn bit about your socialist ideals and dragonian gun law wishes! Criminals don't care about the law. The only people you will hurt by your continued attempt to remove our second amendment rights are the people it was designed to protect. Quit hurting the law abiding public with your arbitrary and unilateral attacks on their (our)constitutional right to bear arms. I must agree with nat-wu regarding the lack of information provided by the various media sources to provide a balanced view of gun ownership by the law abiding. When has any media source provided information that shows the positive impact that firearm ownership has had on the US citizen and the importance that maintaining second amendment rights of the law abiding has had when the private citizen has had to provide their own protection? It never has! It's high time the media provide balanced reporting when it comes to gun ownership in the USA. If we had listened to the liberal gun haters when our country was formed we would still be living under British rule.
Tig is absolutely right. But I would add that our constitutional right to bear arms has another function that is of equal, if not greater importance than basic self defence: This constitutional right is part of our checks and balances. Historically, governments have had a marked penchant for attempting to keep the general population both uneducated and disarmed, as a means of keeping the populace under thumb, and one may believe that those rebelling against English oppression knew that! This right exists as a final block to any U.S. government attempt to arbitrarily abrogate the position of the populace in our Constitution: it guarantees that any collusion or conspiracy within the government that makes such an attempt will have to enforce its will against a population that is hopefully prepared and sufficiently armed to uphold the constitution against that government. And believe me, this is more important overall than self defence at the homestead level, although it obviously must include both.
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