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second amendment

Professor Links Conservative Student Group to Hitler

by College Fix Staff on April 18, 2013

Oliver Darcy of Campus Reform reports:

A professor turned to Facebook on Sunday to challenge a conservative student group’s plan to raffle an “assault rifle” this Friday, a day that happens to be the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing and one day before Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

“[I] applaud you on the choice of dates for your ‘Give Away of an Assault Rifle’ Banquet,” wrote Clemson University Professor John Coggeshall on a Facebook post directed at school’s Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter.

“It’s the same date as the Oklahoma City bombing [SIC] and the day before Adolph Hitler’s birthday,” he continued.

Nick James, the YAF chapter president, denied on Facebook that his club chose the date for any symbolic reasons.

“We simply selected dates which worked for our club and did not conflict with major campus events,” he said.

But in an interview with Campus Reform on Tuesday, Coggeshall continued to speculate the group picked the date for alternative reasons, saying he found it “interesting” the group would raffle off a gun on such a “symbolic date.”

Coggeshall, however, refused to make an accusation, saying again he found the coincidental timing to be “interesting.”

Read the full story here.

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Professor Defends Second Amendment Rights

by College Fix Staff on April 8, 2013

With more than 350 college presidents across the nation signing an open letter to D.C. politicians calling for strict gun control measures, one might think all higher education educators think alike.

But not everyone in the academe believes in over-the-top gun control.

Edward Erler, a noted constitutional law scholar and professor of political science at California State University San Bernardino, delivered a lecture in mid-February at Hillsdale College in which he defended Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Portions of an adaptation of his talk are reprinted below with permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College:

We are currently mired in a frantic debate about the rights of gun owners. One example should suffice to prove that the debate has become hysterical: Second Amendment supporters, one prominent but less than articulate member of Congress alleges, have become “enablers of mass murder.”

… The shooters in Arizona, Colorado, and Newtown were mentally ill persons who, by all accounts, should have been incarcerated. Even the Los Angeles Times admits that “there is a connection between mental illness and mass murder.” But the same progressives who advocate gun control also oppose the involuntary incarceration of mentally ill people who, in the case of these mass shootings, posed obvious dangers to society before they committed their horrendous acts of violence. From the point of view of the progressives who oppose involuntary incarceration of the mentally ill—you can thank the ACLU and like-minded organizations—it is better to disarm the entire population, and deprive them of their constitutional freedoms, than to incarcerate a few mentally ill persons who are prone to engage in violent crimes.

And we must be clear—the Second Amendment is not about assault weapons, hunting, or sport shooting. It is about something more fundamental. It reaches to the heart of constitutional principles—it reaches to first principles. A favorite refrain of thoughtful political writers during America’s founding era held that a frequent recurrence to first principles was an indispensable means of preserving free government—and so it is.

The Second Amendment reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”…

The Second Amendment is unique among the amendments in the Bill of Rights, in that it contains a preface explaining the reason for the right protected: Militias are necessary for the security of a free state. We cannot read the words “free State” here as a reference to the several states that make up the Union. The frequent use of the phrase “free State” in the founding era makes it abundantly clear that it means a non-tyrannical or non-despotic state. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), rightly remarked that the term and its “close variations” were “terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a free country or free polity.”

… Madison frequently stated that all “just and free government” is derived from social compact—the idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which notes that the “just powers” of government are derived “from the consent of the governed.” Social compact, wrote Madison, “contemplates a certain number of individuals as meeting and agreeing to form one political society, in order that the rights, the safety, and the interests of each may be under the safeguard of the whole.” The rights to be protected by the political society are not created by government—they exist by nature—although governments are necessary to secure them. Thus political society exists to secure the equal protection of the equal rights of all who consent to be governed. This is the original understanding of what we know today as “equal protection of the laws”—the equal protection of equal rights.

Each person who consents to become a member of civil society thus enjoys the equal protection of his own rights, while at the same time incurring the obligation to protect the rights of his fellow citizens. In the first instance, then, the people are a militia, formed for the mutual protection of equal rights. This makes it impossible to mistake both the meaning and the vital importance of the Second Amendment: The whole people are the militia, and disarming the people dissolves their moral and political existence.

… Furthermore, the Declaration specifies that when government becomes destructive of the ends for which it is established—the “Safety and Happiness” of the people—then “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” This is what has become known as the right of revolution, an essential ingredient of the social compact and a right which is always reserved to the people. The people can never cede or delegate this ultimate expression of sovereign power. Thus, in a very important sense, the right of revolution (or even its threat) is the right that guarantees every other right. And if the people have this right as an indefeasible aspect of their sovereignty, then, by necessity, the people also have a right to the means to revolution. Only an armed people are a sovereign people, and only an armed people are a free people—the people are indeed a militia.

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Professor Links High Suicide Rates with Republicans, Gun Owners

by College Fix Staff on April 5, 2013

A new study published by a University of California sociology professor links the risk of suicide with gun ownership rates and people who voted for George W. Bush.

“States with the highest rates of gun ownership — for example, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, and West Virginia — also tended to have the highest suicide rates. These states were also carried overwhelmingly by George Bush in the 2000 presidential election.”

That’s how campus officials summed up the recently published study by the professor, who teaches at UC Riverside in Southern California.

The professor also argued stricter gun control laws would reduce suicide rates, but that won’t happen because too many Americans believe they have the right to bear arms.

“Although policies aimed at seriously regulating firearm ownership would reduce individual suicides, such policies are likely to fail not because they do not work, but because many Americans remain opposed to meaningful gun control, arguing that they have a constitutional right to bear arms,” sociology professor Augustine Kposowa was paraphrased as saying by UCR Today, an official campus publication.

“Even modest efforts to reform gun laws are typically met with vehement opposition,” Kposowa said. “There are also millions of Americans who continue to believe that keeping a gun at home protects them against intruders, even though research shows that when a gun is used in the home, it is often against household members in the commission of homicides or suicides. … Adding to the widespread misinformation about guns is that powerful pro-gun lobby groups, especially the National Rifle Association, seem to have a stranglehold on legislators and U.S. policy, and a politician who calls for gun control may be targeted for removal from office in a future election by a gun lobby.”

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Gunfight Pits Extreme, Obnoxious Bills Against Each Other

by Christopher White - University of Missouri on February 28, 2013

Two St. Louis legislators, one Republican and the other a Democrat, are behaving badly as a Second Amendment showdown in the show-me state gets absurd.

Rep. Mike Leara (R-St. Louis) has recently crafted a surprisingly terse bill that makes it a class D felony for a member of the Missouri General Assembly to propose a piece of legislation that abrogates or curtails residents’ Second Amendment rights.

Simply put, Leara’s bill posits – in its entirety – that “any member of the general assembly who proposes a piece of legislation that further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms, as set forth under the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States, shall be guilty of a class D felony.”

The bill is tiny, but it certainly sends a big message: the line has been drawn; it shall not be crossed.

Leara’s legislative proposal is quite unprecedented in that it punishes any legislator with a 5- to 10-year prison sentence for merely proposing gun control legislation. This is a very inventive, audacious, parliamentary suggestion; it ostensibly threatens state legislators with imprisonment if they push legislation unbecoming.

If passed, which is unlikely, it will certainly leave a bad taste in the mouth for those hoping to push future legislative attempts to address gun violence.

The representative’s impressive chutzpah aside, his bill is an overreach.

Not to be outdone, however, Rep. Rory Ellinger (D-St. Louis) recently concocted an anti-gun bill (or, for those who dabble in verbal prestidigitation, a pro-gun safety bill). If approved, it would, in effect, make it a class C felony – which, depending on state law, carries with it a 10- to 25-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine – for Missourians who knowingly manufacture, import, possess, purchase, sell, or otherwise transfer assault rifles.

Ellinger’s proposal is likely to go nowhere in Missouri’s Republican-dominated 97th General Assembly, as it broadly interprets “assault weapons” to mean any semi-automatic shotgun, rifle or pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable 10 round magazine. All such mechanisms would be, heretofore, banned and, along with the ban, anyone owning such weapons would be tried by the state as a felon.

Along with Ellinger’s sweeping, cleaver-like definition of “assault weapons,” which brands anyone who owns, manufactures and sells a pistol a felon—including geriatric grannies who simply want to protect themselves from gun-wielding rapists or killers—there is also the exception that he carves out for law enforcement, army personal, oh – and politicians such as himself.

The bill states “this prohibition shall not apply to any government officer, agent, or employee, member of the armed forces of the United States, or peace officer, to the extent that such a person is otherwise authorized to acquire or possess an assault weapon . . . and does so while acting within the scope of his or her duties.”

So while the manufacturer of “assault weapons” cannot sell semi-automatic weapons to those rabble-rousing, murderous grannies (I assume that the bill allows manufacturers to sell old West style six shooters), they can sell “assault rifles,” shotguns and semi-automatic pistols to any and all public officials, just so long as it is in the scope of his or her duties.

The exemption brings up an interesting question: if every incarnation and permutation of “assault weapons” are made illegal to own, then why would law enforcers and public officials need access to a weapon that is no longer manufactured for private use?

The answer seems simple enough: law enforcement needs access to “assault weapons” because there might be, just maybe, violent, shadowy, lone wolves out there who, because of a budding black market for such murderous weapons, procured such a weapon for the purpose of massacring innocent Missourians; and therefore, law enforcement officials must meet force with force.

In using the aforementioned response to answer the above question, supporters of Ellinger’s fatwa on “assault weapons” must concede that the proposed solution to gun violence, banning all scary looking guns, may not necessarily be the best or even a subaltern solution to the supposed plague of gun violence destroying the country’s moral fibers.

Indeed, if banning such weapons was a prudent, sober and effective solution to ameliorating and stopping gun violence, then police officials would not need the “assault weapons” that Missourians may be prohibited from purchasing.

Ellinger’s ludicrous legislative proposal, in its truest form, is a superfluous suggestion brought to the General Assembly by a vainglorious representative hoping to push a puffed up agenda through the Cave of Winds.

Hopefully the cantankerous contagion that is anti-gunning, which fixates on rambunctious legislators proposing hyper-reactionary anti-gun measures, is contained within the Show-Me State, but somehow I think the contagion will spread.

Fix contributor Christopher White is a graduate student at the University of Missouri.

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Female Students Decry Vomit, Urine, Rape Whistle Tips

by Aslinn Scott - University of Colorado Boulder on February 26, 2013

In the span of two weeks in Colorado, a series of rape prevention advice from campus officials and a Democrat state lawmaker has prompted outrage and concern across the nation – as well as among some female colleges students to which the suggestions were directed, who called the ideas insulting, ineffective and ludicrous.

The rape prevention tips published by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs advised women to deter attackers by telling them they have a disease, or are menstruating, or are about to vomit or urinate.

Meanwhile, as the Colorado House conducted hearings on a controversial gun control bill that would, if approved, make the state’s colleges gun-free zones, Democrat Rep. Joe Salazar said on women’s personal safety on campus: “It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at.”

Although the university has since taken down the tips and campus officials and Salazar has apologized, the notions have sparked outrage. Several female college students, in interviews with The College Fix, said they’re insulted and angry.

Colorado School of Mines graduate student Margaret Albert, 24, said Salazar is out of touch with the realities women face.

“His speech demonstrated a severe lack of understanding of what it is like to be a young woman on a college campus today,” she said.

She added women have a Constitutional right to defend themselves.

“If I as a woman am guaranteed the right to my body and the decision-making over any extension of my body, then why is my intuition regarding a threat to my body not trusted,” she said. “This debate is not about gun safety; it is about my right to choose how I protect myself.”

Cassandra Enomoto, 28, a senior at CU Colorado Springs, said the suggestions broached on rape prevention in her state recently degrade the victim and do not empower women.

“Do you think a rape whistle is going to help me?” she said. “That’s ludicrous.”

In fact, Enomoto said she is one of the few students who possess a concealed carry permit on her campus, and her peers are often surprised to learn this and immediately tense up. But she said she reassures them by explaining she took a lengthy gun safety class and “learned to use it properly and safely.”

“People like me don’t walk around thinking they are going to hurt other people,” she said. “It’s not me you have to worry about.”

As for the rape prevention tips doled at on her campus, she said they’re horrible.

“They have a rape prevention class here on campus,” she said. “I hope they aren’t teaching that to women.”

One tip read: “Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.” Another stated, “Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.” And still another offered: “Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.” “If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense,” read another.

The topic of rape and sexual assaults on college campuses has taken center stage in Colorado recently as a bill before the state legislature, if passed, would enact a statewide campus gun ban, making colleges “gun-free zones.”

And while many Colorado Democrat lawmakers and campus officials support protections for women that don’t involve guns, there’s plenty of Colorado college students who support campus concealed carry laws, according to Colorado State University senior Rachel Drechsler, 23.

She said her legislative politics class took a poll and the overwhelming majority of her peers, both Democrats and Republicans, said they felt safer on campus knowing that if a hostile situation arose, one of their peers would have at least the opportunity to take out the threat rather than having to wait for the police to arrive.

Drechsler, part of the Victim’s Assistance Team on her campus, added that “the biggest misconception about sexual assault on a college campus and in general is that stranger rape is what we as students should be most worried about, because in reality, acquaintance rape occurs far more frequently.”

“Sexual assault can happen at any time of day, so the idea of ‘safety’ may not be the best approach to preventing sexual assault,” she said. “The only person who is capable of preventing sexual assault is the perpetrator. To preach vomiting or urinating illustrates ignorance to the core cause of sexual assault in society: power, privilege, and not taking ‘no’ as meaning exactly what it states – no.”

Fix contributor Aslinn Scott is a student at the University of Colorado – Boulder.

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Conservatives Hit University Where It Hurts – The Pocketbook

by Jennifer Kabbany - Associate Editor on February 21, 2013

Texas Aggie Conservatives, a student group at Texas A&M University, delivered a huge blow to its college administration on Tuesday, handing over a massive petition that demanded the school even out its left-leaning slant or some donations to the campus will stop.

More than 1,200 former students, parents, and students have signed the petition since it was launched a few weeks ago, according to the Texas Aggie Conservatives.

The petition signers declared they are “deeply disappointed that Texas A&M University spends millions of dollars each year in mandatory student fees, taxpayer dollars, and private donations to continually represent only left-wing views.”

“It is high time for A&M to stop pushing a political agenda,” the petition stated. “I pledge to withhold all donations to Texas A&M University… until things change for the better.”

In addition to handing over the petition to college President Bowen Loftin, the student group also presented a list of demands to resolve the issue. They apparently aim to launch a “Traditional Family Values and Personal Responsibility Center,” in addition to other “actions” sought, including:

• A full-time, paid staff adviser for the Aggie Conservatives. … If groups such as GLBT Aggies, Council of Minority Student Affairs (formerly the DREAM Act Support Group), and the Woodson Black Awareness Committee are going to have such staff, then surely TAC should also, for the sake of balance and fairness.

• Funding and administrative support for on-campus centers dedicated to promoting true American conservative values and creating a safe and welcoming climate on campus for conservatives. If the Texas A&M administration is going to fund and support the GLBT Center and Multicultural Center, which consistently promote liberal worldviews on a variety of issues (oftentimes political issues that have nothing to do with the stated purpose of the center), then the administration should also fund and support centers for American Conservatism and Traditional Family Values. … For reference, the Multicultural Center receives around $1,000,000/year in student fees and the GLBT receives around $100,000/year from student and taxpayer sources.

Other demands included more classes on conservative thought to balance out the many on Marxism and gender studies, and an endowed professorship in “American Conservative Studies,” to counteract the college’s many liberal professors.

The conservative group’s action Tuesday took place about a month after actor Danny Glover delivered controversial remarks about the Second Amendment at a university-sponsored event, saying it stemmed “from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts and from uprising by native Americans.”

Texas Aggie Conservatives have called on campus officials to issue an official statement “correcting Glover’s comments,” and to develop a history course about the Second Amendment.

“Documents obtained by TAC through the Texas Public Information Act last month revealed that the university paid over $40,000 for the Glover event, including $27,000 in speakers fees,” the group stated, adding they want the school to “equally distribute funds for conservative speakers, programs, and resources.”

Visit www.AggieConservatives.org for more information.

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