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Monday, May 2, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Assault weapons ban contrary to constitution
U. S. House members are attempting to pass unconstitutional legislation in their efforts to ban assault weapons.
The House Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee approved legislation that would ban 19 semiautomatic assault weapons, halt production of imitation models and impose a 10-round limit on the number of detachable magazines. The legislation is expected to be voted on by the full House sometime in the next two weeks.
The Second Amendment, however, guarantees a citizen's right to bear arms without any regard to what kind of weapons a citizen may own.
All 19 of the firearms being considered are semiautomatic. But the House is not banning all types of semiautomatic weapons. This inconsistency makes the House appear to be banning firearms that it dislikes by calling them "assault weapons" instead of restricting a distinct category of firearms.
It is impossible to draw the line regarding what kind of arms a citizen may bear without a clear definition of terms like "assault weapon." If assault weapons are not clearly defined, legislation banning them is meaningless.
A differentiation between what is and what is not an assault weapon should first be made in a constitutional amendment. Only after these differences of weapons are defined in the Constitution can the House continue efforts to ban any firearms.
AMANDA TRAUGHBER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Financing women's team commendable endeavor
Coors bottling company should be applauded for its recent decision to start sponsoring a women's professional baseball team. It is high time that women are given the opportunity to play professional sports. This development gives women the opportunity to share in the fun and profit inherent in America's favorite pastime.
The decision may seem like a modern day "League of Their Own" in which women are exploited for a quick buck. While Coors' financial interest may be involved, the company is not exploiting a game of scantily clad women chasing each other around a baseball diamond. The women should soon become a class A minor league team. They will compete with Triple A and minor league men's teams, and they hope to send the best players all the way to the major leagues.
Even if Coors is utilizing this situation as a marketing technique, the end result is a beneficial one. One more door is being opened for women in America.
America has always looked at athletes as heroes. Until now, those heroes have almost always been men. Thanks to the opportunity provided by Coors, these unsung women heroes will have the chance to compete on a level that transcends the company or family picnic game. Women should be excited about this development. It is a benefit for women. It is a benefit for society. It is a benefit for the game. It is now time that women will look on with just as much enthusiasm as men when they hear the words "Play ball!"
CARSON ELROD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
THE KANSAN EDITORIAL BOARD: SAMANTHA ADAMS, MARGARET BECK, RICHARD BOYD, CARSON ELROD, SEAN FINN, BEN GROVE, DONELLA HEARNE, MATT HOOD, HEATHER KIRKWOOD, CHRIS LIVINGSTON, COLLEEN McCAIN, NATHAN OLSON, LATINA SULLIVAN, AMANDA TRAUGHBER AND DAVID ZIMMERMAN
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing editor
KANSAN STAFF
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
JUSTIN GARBERG Business manager
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
**EDITORS**
Aast Managing Editor...Dan England
Assistant to the manager...J. R. Clairborne
News...Kristi Fogler, Katie Greenwald
          Todd Selfert
Editorial...Colleen McCain
          Nathan Olean
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Features...Sara Bennett
Wire...Allison Lippert
Freelance...Christine Laue
JENNIFER BLOWEY Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
any other kind of rights, you are wasting your energy. Your time would be much better spent amassing a fortune you can use to buy a senator's support for your favorite legislation to cut someone else off at the knees.
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Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin are required.
Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Fint Hall.
Personally, I think Liberals may yet be our salvation. Right now, however, Liberals are the most aggressive proponents of using force to get their way. Until Liberals acknowledge force, in the form of legislation, taxation, etc., for what it is, they will be hypocrites because they are fond of pretending that they are opposed to force. Conservatives at least admit that they think a bit of force is OK to keep everyone in line. Liberals, if they have the intellectual honesty, have to tell the world that they are no longer going to play the political game designed by the Conservatives. Liberals have to start practicing what they preach. "Imagine Peace" the bumper sticker says. I say "Do Peace."
Kola Figgis.
That was easy. I just got the attention of half of campus.
Conservatives' dirty little secret is that they have been politically correct all along. Mr. Clever was about as conservatively PC as you can get, so to speak. Now that Liberals are bucking, Conservatives are running around screaming "PCI" at those who disagree with their status quo.
Individual rights determined by the biggest gang of thought
Abortion and homosexual rights.
I just wanted to say that—in spite of all the grating of teeth and sharing of personal accounts, and all the closets that are now deserted—those of you who think you will guarantee abortion rights or the rights to sleep with whom you prefer are deluded. At least as long as we operate under our current political system.
COLUMNIST
By our current political system, I mean the system in which "politics is the art of deciding who gets what."
There has been a phenomenal increase in the number of lobbyists representing associations in our federal and state capitals sucking up to our elected representatives to get legislation that favors those they represent over another group. Indeed, that sucking sound that so plagued Ross Perot was not jobs going to Mexico. It was emanating from all the lobbyists in Washington D. C. and all our state capitals. In fact, there is so much sucking up going on in Washington that it may well develop a permanent low-pressure area over our capital.
Not that I support Liberals. How can I? Liberals have good intentions, just as Conservatives, but they both use the same methods, and both are very authoritarian. For instance, one way
our individual rights are not protected we begin to join gangs. Lest you fail to understand why children join gangs, it is very rational behavior when your existence as an individual is threatened. And it is the same reason adults join gangs such as the American Medical Association, the National Education Association, the Teamsters Union, and so on.
to insure you and your friends get what they want is to pack the Supreme Court. Of course presidents try to build a majority of justices who share their goals. And why not?
But this is a "winner takes all" system. There is no recognition of individual rights. It is democracy gone crazy. Like the two wolves and a lamb that vote on dinner. The outcome? Lamb chops, rare, so rare the blood runneth over. What are we going to do tonight? Let's beat up gays. We've got them out numbered.
So, if you think that lots of parading around campus will ensure gay rights, or abortion rights, or gun rights, or
Depressed? I hope so. We all must acknowledge that when we realize
Alten Tiffany is a Lawrence graduate student in English.
Hi, I'm that crazy figure you've seen skulking around Wescoe Hall cackling devilish to myself. I've been doing research for the fascinating expose that you're holding right now. What have I found out, you query? Hold on folks, this one's a doozy: People at KU are TIRED. Mental capacities are being stretched to the limit by preparation for finals, and the net result is a severe decline in the amount of interesting conversations.
Exhaustion brings on weird moods
After you've been in this laid-back
Admit it, everyone's eavesdropped. You're sitting around with someone searching for something to say, and you hear people upwind from you discussing the merits of quilted versus regular toilet tissue. So what's the next thing out of your mouth? "Hey, have you tried Northern lately?"
People say really stupid things when they're tired. The first stage of exhaustion can be pretty entertaining if you're in the right state of mind. If you embrace your fatigue openly, you'll be a lot better off than if you stand around, excuse me, lie around, moaning about how exhausted you are. Remember, friendly zombies are happy zombies.
COLUMNIST
Unfortunately, the onset of SBAD
Though a step down in consciousness, hysteria is considerably better than the Stare Blankly And Drool (SBAD) stage because you can't laugh very easily when you're comatose. And since laughing makes you live longer, I try to laugh as much as I can when I'm fatigued. I figure this nullifies the years that my sleep deprivation is subtracting from my life.
follows hysteria quite rapidly. Victims are usually caught in mid-guffaw and fall senselessly to the ground. After that, well, you best not think about that. It's not pretty.
mode for awhile, the next stage strikes. This is the point when you're no longer coherent enough to start a conversation, but you will laugh tremendously at anything you hear. Blenders set on purée are reason enough to chuckle. Experts call this condition "hysteria."
This overview of fatigue is just one of several scenarios that can occur. Some people cannot hold their exhaustion well. They think they can do more than they really can, and they end up getting too tired too fast. Often they become violent and cranky. I generally avoid displays of anger because they simply drain energy from already depleted reservoirs.
It is possible to be in a violent mode and suddenly fall prey to hysteria when the absurdity of your anxiety becomes apparent to you. Basically, though, how you deal with being tired is a personal decision. I thought about starting a support group for victims of exhaustion, but I'm too tired.
In case you, too, are exhausted and at a severe loss for words this week, I've written down some of my favorite conversation starters. Use them day or night, by themselves or mixed with others. They're guaranteed to make your friends marvel and delight.
Ten Random Statements To Make
Your Friends Marvel And Delight:
1. Those turtles are having sex
2. There was a flea on the gnat on the fly on the wart on the frog on the bump on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
3. Sha-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-hey,
what's that funky sound you make?
here? It sounds like "hot dog" or
something.
4. Are those real?
6. Is the male turtle on top?
5. Michael Jackson doesn't have any nosehair.
6. I make sure to top.
7. I'll have a double cheeseburger
deluxe, plain please. And hold the
cheese, too.
8. "The snot green sea. The scrotum tightening sea" (James Joyce, Uysses, 1922).
10. I did it.
9. If you spit on a TV, you can see the separate colors where your spit lands.
10. Thank you.
Now please, don't thank me for these. Just use them wisely. And get some sleep.
Alisha Aorra is an Overland Park freshman in biology and English.
Columns about protest missed the entire point
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
This is in response to the columns written by Allen Tiffany and Brian Dirck on April 27.
I decided to take the advice of Tiffany to write and not to march. I think Tiffany and Direk missed the entire point of the march. The march was to show that minorities were sick and tired of the Kansan and all other newspapers excluding the achievements and accomplishments of minorities.
When Direk said that a student said, "Oh, give me a break," another student rolled his eyes, and as far as he could tell, there was a giant yawn about the whole issue. I wished he would have heard the response from my community. I assure him, no one vawned.
Dirck also stated that the 50 erst.
Dirck assumed that because the Kansas covered one minority group, LesBiGays, during the week of the HALO conference, all should have been happy. Excuse me, but just because coverage of one group satisfies people like you, that does not say all minority groups want to be categorized as one.
while warriors for truth and justice did not know what they were talking about. I would like to tell you something: you don't know what you are talking about.
This brings me to Mr. Tiffany, who encourages me to write. Tiffany stated, "For those of you who want your favorite group or issue to get more coverage, we consider this." He then went on to equate the Libertarians, his favorite group, to minorities. Mr. Tiffany, did you or did you not choose to become a Libertarian? African Americans, His-
panics, Asians and Native Americans did not wake up one morning and decide "Oh, I'll be Black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American today." For you to consider our racial identity as a favorite group or issue is just plain dumb.
Tasmin Mills Washington, DC senior
I seriously hope that these views are not those of the mainstream. If they are, we, as a college community, are in serious trouble.
Now take a closer look at a popular "sport" that's just 40 minutes away from Lawrence: greyhound racing.
Greyhounds ill-treated,
some killed by trainers
Margaret Beck's editorial about the cruelty that dogs endure during the Alaskan Iditarod race was accurate.
The sleek athletic dogs you catch a fleeting glimpse of at the ractetrack spend the majority of their lives in stacked, cramped cages.
Many dogs gnaw at cages or rub back and forth until hair falls out.
According to the Greyhound Protection League, four out of five greyhounds, 50,000 each year are discarded in this country. If a greyhound doesn't run fast enough, the dog may be sent to a research laboratory, it may be one of just 3,000 a year adopted or it may be killed.
Refuse to support this cruel sport.
In addition, support greyhound protection groups, such as the Greyhound Protection League, P.O. 60715, Palo Alto, Calif. 94306. Phone (415) 327-0631.
Kathryn Wiese Morton KU Natural History Museum