Published in the Mountainview
On NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning, November 10, 1996, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) said that gun control was an issue he would like to bring up again in the next session of Congress. His primary reason for this, he said, is that people need guns to protect themselves.
Aside from the oft-quoted statistic that people are more likely to be hurt with their own firearms than to use the successfully in self-defense, there are serious flaws with Sen. Lott's opinion.
But if people "need" these weapons to defend themselves, and "to feel safe" (which was his second reason for reducing legal controls on guns), we must explore the reasons for this. Why do people feel unsafe in their own homes? I will assume for the moment that large numbers of Americans are at this moment cowering behind sofas, with stereos blasting, attempting to allay their fears that "jackbooted thugs" are about to kick in the door.
People feel unsafe in their own homes because they are unsafe in their own homes. News report after news report warns us that convicted killers are on the loose (as was true after a northern New York prison break this summer). We also hear of burglary rings, shootings like the sobering and saddening accident last spring at the Otterside Apartments in Middlebury, and drug problems. Read even the police blotter in the Addison County Independent and you will see all of these problems are prevalent in Vermont as well as many other areas of the country.
Bob Dole contributed his idea for the legalization of guns. "Instant Check" was the name of his system of doing immediate background checks on prospective gun buyers. At present, this process takes seven days. Dole suggested that anyone who wanted a weapon should be able to buy one and leave the story with it immediately, as if he had purchased a gallon of milk. His proposal ignored the black market for firearms which relieves criminals of their need to buy guns from legal gun dealers. This black market prevents criminals from facing a background check at all, and provides them access to weapons only U.S. military personnel can carry legally.
Neither of these men - the current and immediate past Senate majority leaders - have come up with any other ways to make people feel safe in their own homes. Neither has suggested that President Clinton's idea to put 100,000 more police on America's streets was an effective crime-fighting initiative. Neither has suggested that we take the money we would spend on gun lobbying and implementing gun controls, and interdict illegal weapons shipments into and around the country. The New York Times reported last year that over three-quarters of America's illegal weapons are transported on "the Iron Road," Interstate 95 between Washington, D.C. and Boston.
We could spend less money more effectively fighting illegal gun traffic than we can implementing a legal system for gun purchase. We are very far behind the rest of our trade partners in this arena. This autumn, the United Kingdom, in response to last year's massacre of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, made it nearly imposible for any adult to own firearms. U.K. police need special permits and intensive training to carry weapons, even in the execution of their professional duties.
We are in a country where the police are heavily armed, ambulance crews purchase their own bulletproof vests as self-insurance, and where the people are still afraid in their own homes. With the assault weapons ban and the Brady Bill, we have created a functioning national system which ensures that anyone who attempts to buy a gun legally will undergo proper scrutiny before being allowed to leave a gun shop with weapons. We now need to take on this issue of illegal weapons. We need national leadership against criminal use of weapons and against weapons smuggling. The intransigence of the national leadership to recognize this shortfall in American domestic crime policy is staggering.
Wednesday, November 20, 1996
Thursday, November 14, 1996
Opinion: Be proud of the diversity in our community
Published in the Mountainview
At Convocation, incoming students are made "welcome to the Middlebury community," and then, moments later, assured that the next time they are in one place with all of the members of their class will be at Commencement. Is this group a true community? They will meet twice in four years, and never with all of the other Middlebury students, staff, and faculty. Can, as the Admissions Office hopes, this community not only exist but be diverse? Diversity, rooted in differences, and community, based in similarities, seem contradictory goals, though each has its own merits.
Middlebury has a broader diversity than might appear at first blush. While many people would remark upon the pervading "whiteness" of the student body, there are many members of minority groups and international students at Middlebury who broaden the range of cultural experience. Even among the white students on campus, there is diversity. A man from Brooklyn very likely has a background dissimilar to that of a woman from Iowa.
Middlebury also has more community than we might think. Many people see in disagreement a lack of community. "How can someone who thinks so differently from me be part of the same community" they ask. People begin to define an "us" and a "them." This threatens to split the group, but instead brings them closer to each other, and further encircles them within the same bounds of community which they wish to escape.
Disparate viewpoints form a community by strict adherence to the same rules of discourse. In the recent presidential campaign, Bob Dole's onslaught of negativity led many voters to believe he was playing from a different rule book than they were. This hurt him, even though he made some valid criticisms of Bill Clinton's record.
We must not get confused between "commune" and "community," though the two words are related. A "sense of community" only requires everyone to play by the same rules, whether they agree or disagree. A "sense of commune" connotes a softly-lit meadow of ideas in which all members of a tightly-knit group sit quietly talking, thinking, observing butterflies, and agreeing unanimously on all things.
The commune is anything but diverse. A community, however, must be diverse; indeed if it is not diverse, it can be described as a commune. Diversity informs community members of viewpoints and ways of thinking which are not their own. A community which is cognizant of itself in a larger context is a stronger community than one which is unaware of its surroundings.
At college, as at no other time in your life, you are forced to live among a group of people many of whom disagree quite fundamentally with your own views. Further, because the institution imposes a framework to which all participants must subscribe, everyone is required to play by the same set of rules.
This available diversity permits students to take advantage of others' experiences which would not be accessible elsewhere. The world outside Middlebury is diverse; in light of Middlebury's task to educate you to operate in that world, diversity is one of the best educational tools available.
The sense of community which Middlebury creates is at least a place where the participants cherish diversity and endeavor to learn from it. This is one of the common precepts which members of the Middlebury community embrace. Diversity can, indeed, be a foundation of community.
Not everyone at Middlebury does, can, or even should agree. With widespread agreement diversity disappears. What of the community which does not respect diversity? In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters recently took over Kabul and imposed ancient Islamic law on all inhabitants. Taliban troops can arrest, and even kill, a woman who goes to a job she held before the town was captured. What was previously a city successfully walking the precarious line between Muslim tradition and western commerce is not caught in the grasp of an intolerant power. The risk of lack of respect of diversity is rarely so clear, or so costly.
The danger at Middlebury is more insidious for its comparative invisibility. The community must be diverse to be strong, and all participants must adhere to one guiding rule: diversity is valuable.
At Convocation, incoming students are made "welcome to the Middlebury community," and then, moments later, assured that the next time they are in one place with all of the members of their class will be at Commencement. Is this group a true community? They will meet twice in four years, and never with all of the other Middlebury students, staff, and faculty. Can, as the Admissions Office hopes, this community not only exist but be diverse? Diversity, rooted in differences, and community, based in similarities, seem contradictory goals, though each has its own merits.
Middlebury has a broader diversity than might appear at first blush. While many people would remark upon the pervading "whiteness" of the student body, there are many members of minority groups and international students at Middlebury who broaden the range of cultural experience. Even among the white students on campus, there is diversity. A man from Brooklyn very likely has a background dissimilar to that of a woman from Iowa.
Middlebury also has more community than we might think. Many people see in disagreement a lack of community. "How can someone who thinks so differently from me be part of the same community" they ask. People begin to define an "us" and a "them." This threatens to split the group, but instead brings them closer to each other, and further encircles them within the same bounds of community which they wish to escape.
Disparate viewpoints form a community by strict adherence to the same rules of discourse. In the recent presidential campaign, Bob Dole's onslaught of negativity led many voters to believe he was playing from a different rule book than they were. This hurt him, even though he made some valid criticisms of Bill Clinton's record.
We must not get confused between "commune" and "community," though the two words are related. A "sense of community" only requires everyone to play by the same rules, whether they agree or disagree. A "sense of commune" connotes a softly-lit meadow of ideas in which all members of a tightly-knit group sit quietly talking, thinking, observing butterflies, and agreeing unanimously on all things.
The commune is anything but diverse. A community, however, must be diverse; indeed if it is not diverse, it can be described as a commune. Diversity informs community members of viewpoints and ways of thinking which are not their own. A community which is cognizant of itself in a larger context is a stronger community than one which is unaware of its surroundings.
At college, as at no other time in your life, you are forced to live among a group of people many of whom disagree quite fundamentally with your own views. Further, because the institution imposes a framework to which all participants must subscribe, everyone is required to play by the same set of rules.
This available diversity permits students to take advantage of others' experiences which would not be accessible elsewhere. The world outside Middlebury is diverse; in light of Middlebury's task to educate you to operate in that world, diversity is one of the best educational tools available.
The sense of community which Middlebury creates is at least a place where the participants cherish diversity and endeavor to learn from it. This is one of the common precepts which members of the Middlebury community embrace. Diversity can, indeed, be a foundation of community.
Not everyone at Middlebury does, can, or even should agree. With widespread agreement diversity disappears. What of the community which does not respect diversity? In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters recently took over Kabul and imposed ancient Islamic law on all inhabitants. Taliban troops can arrest, and even kill, a woman who goes to a job she held before the town was captured. What was previously a city successfully walking the precarious line between Muslim tradition and western commerce is not caught in the grasp of an intolerant power. The risk of lack of respect of diversity is rarely so clear, or so costly.
The danger at Middlebury is more insidious for its comparative invisibility. The community must be diverse to be strong, and all participants must adhere to one guiding rule: diversity is valuable.
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