Is this ("Shooting for Safety and Civil Rights," The Spectrum, March 3) an example of the Republicans bringing "serious intellectual diversity to this campus," going off on a shooting spree the same week "Bowling for Columbine" is being screened by the Student Association? Isn't that like Charlton Heston visiting sites where shooting tragedies have taken place? Does this mean that campus Republicans are learning from the NRA?
I don't know; maybe it's just me having lived too long in countries where people trust their governments, but I've never understood this American obsession with guns - especially since I don't feel any safer knowing that there are people wandering around with access to AK-47s. And all right, so maybe blasting away at cardboard cut-outs of Osama (bin Laden) can be defended as "merely exercising the right as an American," but what about my "universal" right to "life, liberty and security of person?" My "person" sure doesn't feel very secure thinking about someone having a "stress-relieving experience" with an "AR-15 semi-automatic rifle" (whatever happened to a nice cup of tea? What's wrong with a cold beer or sex?) And I sure can't exercise my right to liberty if I'm hiding all the time, afraid to go out on the streets because of all the Republicans having "really cool experiences" with semi-automatic weaponry.
Personally, I'd rather keep the schools open, get rid of a few potholes, maybe fix up public transit and the medical system - and live with some surety that maybe some of my politicians weren't all crooks - instead of worrying that my kid might not live until his high school graduation just because someone else placed the importance of their own narrow interpretation of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution over whatever rights anyone else might care to exercise.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
