UT - Daily Beacon

[bteague2]

The UT student newspaper The Daily Beacon had an extremely anti-gun piece in their "Rocky Tops & Bottoms" section today. They have not updated their website for today but when they do I will post a link to it. I wrote a letter to them and hope any other UT students on here will do the same.

In your recent article (today) in "Rocky Tops & Bottoms" about the recent surge of interest in the "gun carry debate" there quite a few flaws that have been ignored. First off nobody is debating guns on campus. People are debating allowing people with their handgun carry permit to carry their handgun on campus. There would not be a rapid increase in school violence, if anything there would be a decrease. The people with handgun carry permits are not the ones that are going to go crazy and shoot up the school. Those people are going to carry guns on campus regardless of what the law says. Banning guns takes away the average students equalizer. A handgun can put an eighty year old grandmother and a young mugger on an equal playing field.

Secondly your statement that "it doesn't take much of an imagination to come up with countless counterexamples proving guns on campus would not be a good idea." You are exactly right, all you need is an imagination that allowing handguns on campus would be a bad idea, but while you are using what-if arguments the pro handgun on campus side is using real examples. All of the recent incidents at schools, churches, and town halls have been carried out by people who do not have a permit. People who make up their mind to kill another person for no reason other then the fact of wrong time, wrong place are not going to worry about a little thing like a felony charge for having a gun where they should not.

"Most distrubing is that campus carry isn't what we should be discussing. Wouldn't it be better to talk about requiring background checks at gun shows or renewing the ban on assault weapons?Why haven't we heard a revived discussion the the need for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban - a 10-year-old ban which expired in 2004?" The most disturbing thing is how one sided this article is. Please do even 30 seconds of research next time before writing your next article. Gun shows do require background checks, as do every single gun sale from a gun dealer. Secondly the "assault weapon" ban was not renewed because a politician realized the difference between good legislation and feel-good legislation. "Assault weapon" is a term made up by the anti-gun campaigners, by definition assault(as·sault) - a violent physical or verbal attack(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assault). So an assault weapon is anything, it could be a rock, a stick, or your car keys; but we do not ban those things and anybody can get those without a background check or even paying for them.

Lastly I would like to leave an invitation for anybody who is afraid of guns. Contact myself or any other member of The Shooting Club and we will happily point you to a range where you can rent a gun or take a safety class. Most of us will even take you ourselves and let you shoot our guns so you can see that a gun like a car or any other inanimate object is not evil, it all depends on the person that is using it.

Junior, Religious Studies

Edited January 22, 2009 by bteague2
letter formatting

[bteague2]

Alright it won't work but there were paragraphs in my letter.

[strickj]

Would like to see that story

[Marswolf]

Please post a link when it becomes available.

[Guest TargetShooter84]

Not bad, Barrett. I've read some recent articles about people protesting the ideas of having guns on campus on the Daily Beacon, and I frankly disagree with them because I agree that it would reduce school violence and those that have HCP are responsible individuals that take their responsibilities seriously and already know their consequences of their actions if deemed inappropriate. Very nice article.

Kudos.

-S

[bteague2]

Here is the link to Monday's article:

http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=53038

And here is the link to today's 2 editorials:

http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/sectionindex.php?subject=Letters

[saintsfanbrian]

Wow, those people are idiots. A book may be lighter, “Nonviolent Communication.” Please Mr. Gunman. Don't shoot me. I am non-violent.

" What would happen, for example, if in the confusion an armed citizen shot a security officer responding to the event?"

And how exactly is that security guard going to be there so fast that the teacher/student would be able to shoot them in the confusion?

These are prime examples of academia indoctrinating the sheep to their thoughts. While I agree that letters to the editor are allowed from anyone, I think that the Vice Provost should have been given another area of the paper for faculty and let the students PRO gun have a say in the paper.

Keep us posted.

[Marswolf]

One has to question the depth of the ability to think logically after reading this.

Rising — Depth of the gun carry debate on the Beacon’s pages

It’s been about a month since we at the Beacon published the first letter arguing that persons with handgun carrying permits should be allowed to pack heat on campus. Since then, we’ve witnessed a deluge of letters flowing in non-stop, giving us an abundance to choose from.

Perhaps this interest in gun carrying on campus is due to the recent crime surge in the Fort. Or maybe it can be attributed to concerns about school shootings. Maybe it’s because we read about four other school shootings the week of the Northern Illinois University massacre.

But we must admit that reading the letters we’ve received these past weeks has upset us. We don’t think guns ever will be the answer in cases of unpredictable, violent behavior. Some of the letter writers have pointed to examples when having an individual carry a gun may have saved lives in the event of a massacre. But it doesn’t take much of an imagination to come up with countless counterexamples proving guns on campus would not be a good idea.

So it’s the truth when we say that just as many of our readers have been distressed to see so many argue in favor of campus carry, we too have been disappointed. We don’t want to see guns in the holsters of anyone other than the campus police.

Most disturbing is that campus carry isn’t what we should be discussing.

Wouldn’t it be better to talk about requiring background checks at gun shows or renewing the ban on assault weapons? Why haven’t we heard a revived discussion on the need for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban — a 10-year-old ban which expired in 2004?

Or why not try to consider ways that states could more easily submit information about a person’s mental health so that it could be evaluated during background checks? Why not begin by making sure all states submit those mental health records to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System? Currently, only 32 states have turned over such records.

We’re glad that our pages have provided a setting for an intense discussion of the validity and utility of allowing permit holders to bring their guns to campus. But let’s hope guns don’t make their way to UT. What a way to kill trust between people, or what little remains of it.

[bteague2]

Here is the letter that I sent to the Beacon regarding todays letter to the editor.

In the letter to the editor "Untrained gun owners unfit to respond", Mr. Diacon is depending on feel good laws up in his ivory tower. "Gun proponents assume they would act logically, calmly and rationally, but only after being fully informed of all components of the attack. Of course, no one knows the future, and if the eyewitness accounts tell us anything, it is that there is total confusion, fear and panic. Thus, even if armed, it is possible — perhaps even probable — that these individuals would not act effectively." Mr. Diacon is absolutely right, nobody on campus could react correctly when a gun man starts shooting. It is true ever single college student came to the university straight after high school, there are no reservist, national guardsmen, off duty police, or even prior military service people who have done exactly what Mr. Diacon claims is impossible.

Additionally Mr. Diacon makes an absurd argument that people will be shooting everyone thinking they are the gun men. "What would happen, for example, if in the confusion an armed citizen shot a security officer responding to the event? How would it help if this armed staff member or professor shot an unarmed student who merely was reaching out to help a fallen colleague? And what would happen if security personnel, seeing an armed individual who in reality was a professor, shot this individual believing he was the gunman?" Last time I checked security guards and our very own UTPD wear uniforms, which clearly identify them as an authority figure coming to assistance. More so there is no way that a teacher could mistake a student trying to reach for a fallen student to help them for a mad gun men, after all they all have PHDs or other advanced degrees.

Lastly our government, the Supreme Court, in 2005 "Castle Rock v. Gonzales" ruled that we as Americans do not have a constitutional right to police protection. If the police have no responsibility to protect us, why should we depend on them?

Barrett Teague

Religious Studies

[Guest dotsun]

One has to question the depth of the ability to think logically after reading this.

What did you expect? They're typical bed wetting adolescents with absolutely no experience about the subject they write. They have an uninformed biased opinion and an outlet for it, in their minds that's all that's required to be an expert that should be taken seriously as an adult.

[Marswolf]

What did you expect? They're typical bed wetting adolescents with absolutely no experience about the subject they write. They have an uninformed biased opinion and an outlet for it, in their minds that's all that's required to be an expert that should be taken seriously as an adult.

I think that's about it. It's amazing how ignorant fools work, isn't it?

[Guest dotsun]

Yeah way too many people live in a complete fantasy world, and particularly at college age and younger they believe that nothing bad can ever happen to them. They can't wrap their tiny minds around the concept that it could have been them in a classroom when the shooter burst through the door. It's just some abstract thing that happened far away that proves their point about guns being bad.

Edited March 5, 2008 by dotsun

[Mike.357]

Perhaps this interest in gun carrying on campus is due to the recent crime surge in the Fort

I found this quote most interesting in the original story. Fort according to word.net is defined as a noun meaning "a fortified defensive structure" and as a verb meaning "gather in, or as if in, a fort, as for protection or defense"

Seems having a means of defense would be a starting point for going to school or living there.

I would like to know how many crimes in Fort Sanderson area are committed with an assault rifle. Well don't let facts get in the way of a good story I say.