No guts on gun control

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
No guts on gun control				August 22, 2007

There are times when you’d like to get your hands on a giant scalpel and slice open a few Democrats to make sure that their guts are where they should be.

Blown into control of the House and Senate by a hurricane of discontent over the war in Iraq, the Democrats have shown no inclination to rein in the runaway Bush war wagon. Fearful lest they be seen as soft on terrorism, they have willfully poured additional monetary fuel on the Iraqi fire and given a terror-crazed president even more invasive wiretapping options to use against his own citizens.

While they claim to favor disabling the engines of abusively driving lobbyists who run roughshod over most members of Congress, they nevertheless revert to a state of abject meekness and obeisance when it comes to the National Rifle Association.

It was only after getting a pass from the NRA that the Democrats backed legislation in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre to clean up the databases used by gun shop owners and federal and state investigators.

Yet, what the NRA giveth with the right hand, it taketh away with the left.

In early July, with clear Democratic support and at the insistence of the NRA, the House Appropriations Committee refused to repeal the so-called Tiahrt amendment. In one of the most egregious cases of congressional pusillanimity toward the NRA, Kansas Republican representative Tod Tiahrt’s provision prevents the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from publishing reports that use gun trace data and limits the access of local investigators to trace data. It also prohibits trace data from being used as evidence in gun license revocation cases or civil lawsuits.

Even worse is the fact that the Senate, again with Democratic approval, is debating a bill that would toss into prison any law officer who uses or shares gun tracing data for anything other than a specific investigation.

Despite the bloody homicides at Virginia Tech; despite the fact that juveniles with guns are terrorizing places like Newport News; despite the fact that three innocent prospective college students were lined up against a wall in Newark and fatally shot by six young people – one of them only 16 years old – for no apparent reason; despite all the evidence that guns in the hands of teenagers are disasters waiting to happen, gun control and the tracing of murder weapons are completely off the table and missing from the agenda of the NRA and its congressional lackeys.

But the worst may be yet to come.

A movement that can be said only to lend credulity to the rise of catapulting cuckooism has recently surfaced at George Mason University.

According to a recent story in the Daily Press, Andrew Dysart, a senior at George Mason, has organized a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

The idea behind this is that massacres such as those at Virginia Tech can be avoided only if we allow students in their late teens and early 20s to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. If we arm our students to the teeth, they’ll be better able to fend off the murderous Chos, who are also students armed to the teeth.

The notion that student shootouts at the OK Corral will become the norm when dealing with gun violence on campuses is so outrageously irrational that it borders on the insane.

In addition, as someone who has stood before many a class at William & Mary, I have no interest whatsoever in testing or giving low grades to students packing heat in their pants or armpits. I have dealt with too many angry students to know how quickly they can bring themselves to the brink of brain boil.

Nor can I imagine that, given the penchant of college students for alcoholic hazery and rampant partying, guns are a palliative ingredient to toss into that mix.

The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators had it right. To allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus, they said, “has the potential to dramatically increase violence on our college and university campuses.”

All too often we forget that college freshmen are simply a year away from high school seniors. Yet, if the reasoning of Dysart and his group has credence, we should allow high school students to carry concealed weapons as a preventative against future Columbines.

If the absurdity of that argument is so blatantly apparent, why does the same rationale become acceptable in the case of college students? The fact is that it doesn’t.

Rather surprisingly, the House of Delegates this year agreed that guns and academia don’t mix and sidetracked a bill that would have allowed colleges to permit concealed weapons on their campuses. Dysart hopes to change that during the next legislative session.

As long as the NRA and its henchmen in both parties are so deeply entrenched in our legislative processes, there will be no hope for major gun control. Our only salvation at this point is that saner views will prevail in limited cases such as those dealing with guns on college campuses.

Or the Democrats might find their guts, but don’t count on that.