In defense of the right to bear arms

In response to Ben McIlwain’s April 19 column “Lessons From Blacksburg,” I find it interesting that he chose this article as a proper place to air his frustrations with gun ownership. Not only were his points uncalled for in this instance, but they were in line with the traditional knee-jerk, emotional responses that follow tragedies such as this.

While it is impossible to say whether the Virginia Tech incident could have been avoided if students were allowed to carry concealed weapons on the campus, there is a huge amount of empirical evidence that completely disproves McIlwain’s allegations that more guns equal more crime. Firearms are not “magic crime-prevention devices,” but it has been proved time and again that areas with liberal concealed weapons laws have lower crime while places with restrictions or bans on firearms see an increase in crime.

In Switzerland, each and every household is required to have an automatic weapon. How often do you hear about a burgeoning homicide rate in Switzerland? In 1982, the city of Kennesaw, Ga., passed an ordinance requiring mandatory gun ownership. What followed was a precipitous drop in crime (up to an 89 percent drop in residential burglary). In 1976, Washington banned all handguns, and what followed was an explosion in the homicide rate. In 1997, England banned all firearms for civilians, and last year alone saw a 50 percent increase in capital gun crime. And while the homicide rate still does not approach that of the United States, England’s other violent crime rates surpass America’s by far.

It would certainly appear to be logical that more guns would beget more crime, but as you can see, that is simply not the case. McIlwain states that guns “are dangerous and deadly weapons in their own right,” but I disagree. Instead, it should be said that guns can be dangerous when in the hands of someone who is not properly trained to handle them, but beneficial in the hands of someone who is. Timothy McVeigh took down the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Does it not follow with McIlwain’s logic that fertilizer is “dangerous”? One more point: The column claims that guns are “dangerous, and an ideal society would not require everyone to be carrying them around, so why do so many pretend otherwise?” Our society is far from ideal. I believe it is McIlwain who is pretending.

John BeamerJuniorCriminology and Criminal Justice

Time to face global warming

How could you put something in The Diamondback about a “documentary” “debunking” global warming during Earth Week, or any week for that matter? It’s ridiculous journalism to give so much attention to this when maybe hundreds of scientists claim global warming isn’t happening while tens of thousands have reached a consensus that global warming is happening. Furthermore, it’s not just numbers, but the world’s top scientists all agree it’s happening and we are causing it. Some mediocre scientist who has been repeatedly paid by coal and oil companies should not even count (and, yes, that has happened). To give this documentary more attention than all of the fantastic environmental events this week is just sickening. It is solidly established that there is a problem, and the best journalism I can think of would be to talk about what students on the campus are doing about it.

Sage SheldonGraduate StudentGeography

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