4
Monday, January, 27,1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
NOW repressive
When the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded as a liberal group to support women in their fight for equal rights, few people expected that it would one day produce a closed-minded仁性 that would attempt daily individual her freedom of expression.
But it has happened. Pat Goltz, a member of the Columbus, Ohio, NOW chapter for four years and president of a group called Femi-Music from the NOW chapter for exercising her right of freedom of speech.
Basically, most feminists would find Goltz's track record admirable. She was an advocate of women's rights before it was a popular cause, she is a strong supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and she has worked hard against sexism in education.
Unfortunately, Goltz believes that permissive abortion "kills unworn women and men and exploits their mothers." Her NOW sisters found her zeal in opposing permissive abortion, but she did not tribunal voted five to one with two abstentions to expel her from the local chapter.
According to Carolyn Burkhardt, a member of the committee that voted for expulsion, NOW's bylaws allow expulsion proceedings against members who publicly oppose a policy of the organization and at the same time identify themselves as NOW policy.
Goltz has totally denied this accusation. She said she admitted to being a member only when she was directly asked. Erica Scurr, Columnist at The New York Times, had no evidence that Goltz had ever used her NOW affiliation to obtain a
forum from which to denounce abortion.
But Boltz was expelled anyway. She was given her day in court, which apparently resembled joan of cloth, in defence to the charge of being a witch.
Burkhardt said that instead of presenting her case against expulsion, Goltz presented a case against abortion. She also said that Goltz had refused to give up her membership in NOW.
One would expect that the local chapter's action would affect women's groups all over the nation. However, when I tried to get information from local members of NOW, they didn't know anything about it. Another group in Louis didn't know about the expulsion, either. In addition, no other women's organization has yet taken a stand on the issue.
Perhaps the Columbus chapter is doing its best to keep Goltz's expulsion a secret. However, if the silence of other chapters and women's actions that they condone the action, it is easy to question their priorities.
Do they really care about women's rights or are they merely concerned with their own personal and political interests? The doctrine expressed by the Columbus chapter appears to be that a woman's "right to choose" must coincide with the organization's right to choose for her.
Judging by their action, the Columbus chapter of NOW has become another so-called liberal organization that, while promising to do as much as possible for equality, is undercutting one of the Constitution's most cherished privileges—freedom of expression.
—Kenn Louden
Point of information
In Wednesday's Kansan, Kala Mays Strup, our new dean of women, said that although KU had kept up with the women's rights movement, there was still room for greater participation by women in campus organizations and activities. Among the organizations she mentioned in that regard was the National Advisory Council, which she didn't believe had ever had a woman editor.
In fact, the Kansan has had eight
woman editors in the last 20 years, three of them in the last four years. We've also had several woman business managers.
Beyond that, women have frequently been in such key staff positions as associate editor, campus editor and chief photographer. True, men dominate the upper echelons of the staff this semester, but in past semesters just the reverse has been true.
We'd like to set the record straight
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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John Dilu
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Craig Dennis Ellsworth
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Gun control a hot issue
By JAN HYATT
Hawaiian Sea Reporter
It was cold and quiet in Lawrence when Monday, Jan. 6,
arrived.
The day was a little over an hour old when the first shooting of the year occurred.
It left Saly Dee Spears, 15, dead from a bullet wound in the head. The weapon that killed her was a 22 caliber pistol.
The young man charged with her murder was a former boyfriend who reportedly had argued with her earlier. They were arrested after years, but she was trying to break off the relationship.
The evidence made public so far in this killing is typical of thousands of shootings that occur yearly in the United States. The suspect is under 30, he hadn't been charged with or convicted of a serious crime but was well, he apparently acted as passionate anger and he is charged with using a small, cheap handgun to settle a personal quarrel by killing.
It is the rising number of murders and crimes involving guns in cities, suburbs and towns everywhere that has caused resurging calls for tough federal gun control legislation.
Though some are absolutists who want all guns collected and kept away from the civilian population, most are paranoid about the danger of handguns and the notorious "Saturday night special." The "special" is: a small-caliber pistol with a two or three-inch barrel. Such weapons bought easily from a store or a street dealer for $60 or less.
As always, the pro-gun control people face concerted, powerful opposition from the National Hile Association (NRA) and the rest of the so-called "leaders" in lobby's ability to convince Congressmen that they will lose their seats in the next election if they support gun control is the major obstacle to a new federal law, wrote Rep. Michael J. Cohen, the president of Politics of Gun Control," an article written for Nation last year.
Gallup and other polls for the past 15 years have shown that 70 per cent of the American public favors registration of all guns, putting him at odds with the will of the majority, say gun control advocates.
Law enforcement workers, especially in cities, are becoming outspoken critics of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
That law was first proposed in 1965, but didn't pass until the Johnson administration made it a priority legislative item after the assassinations of Martin Jong and Robert Kennedy.
Some cliche arguments against gun control surface in bumper sticker campaigns every time a new law is proposed. "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" and "Hitter started with guns" are examples.
tepertations and analyses of the historical context in which the Bill of Rights was written agree that the amendment guarantees a collective right to maintain a state militia like the Army Guard, an absolute right for private citizens to own firearms.
The law banned importation of cheap handguns, the inthe program ended then because the police department ran out of funds and the Law Enforcement Assistance Agency refused to grant money to continue it.
The NRA and the gun enthusiasts have their own arguments, but they are ignored by the press and public leaders.
Antigun control people often quote only the last half of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which reads in full: "A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of the country," and people in people to keep and bear arms shall not be infirmed."
Gun lobbyists point to the ineffectiveness of state laws requiring gun owners to obtain a state license.
New Jersey passed a license
By October, it collected 12,000
guns of all kinds and values.
During the month, the number
involving guns fell 20
per cent.
Supreme Court interstate sale of guns through the mail and possession of guns by convicted criminals, illegal aliens and the mentally disturbed. It also required federal licensing of all gun dealers. A loophole in the imposition could be assembled into a complete gun to continue entering the country.
It is the rising number of murders and crimes involving guns that has caused resurging calls for tough federal gun control legislation.
Some law enforcement agencies have tried antigun programs of their own. In Baltimore last September, the police department, by then faced with 112 murders and 105 inquiries involving guns, offered $50 and no-questions-for asked for gun in working order that was turned in.
law in 1966, but its murder and suicide rates doubled between 1965 and 1972.
Illinois passed a similar law in 1967, and its violent crimes involving guns have increased yearly at about the same rate as the national increase. Its neighbor has decreased murder rate until 1974 with no state laws on gun control.
It isn't true that the gun manufacturing industry and others in the lobby have been unbending in the debate over gun control. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the NRA and 12 manufacturers agreed that legislation was needed to keep guns "special" in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1972.
Their big argument with the bill under study was that it
Congress sick of violent gun crimes will pass laws requiring registration of all guns, licensing of all owners and elimination of several kinds of guns frequently used in crimes, including all pistols, revolvers, small rifles and shotguns.
The disparity between the resources, money and influence of the two sides in the gun legislation dispute is a factor of the power struggle of special interests and public interest.
The gun lobby in Washington and state capitals includes representatives of NRA, NSF, manufacturers like Remington Arms Co., Olm Corporation, Tesson and Browning Arms associated as small hunting and target-shooting associations.
Some sportsmen have settled for elimination of handguns of 35 caliber or less.
The National Wildlife Federation, Wildlife Management Institute, the Isaac Walton League and state agencies joined forces with the NRA in pressuring against gun control. An estimated 21 million Americans are hunters, and they can be counted on to write thousands of letters and sign thousands of petitions every month.gun control bill is introduced.
The NRA has one million members. It maintains a fulltime staff of 250 in an eight-story building in Washington. It has total assets of $19 million and a yearly budget of $8 million. It earns much of its revenues from advertising by
With a younger, newer and more liberal Congress the chances of a gun control bill passing are better than before.
The industry spokesmen said it was a 22 or 23 caliber gun of low quality, usually assembled from imported parts by the manufacturer, but barrel making it inaccurate except at close range. The "special" is useless for the legitimate sportsman or officer used in one-third of all crimes involving guns, they said.
didn't clearly define what the "special" was.
It could be said that the manufacturers were protecting themselves from cheap competition.
But the sportsmen's associations have become alarmed that a citizenry and
gun manufacturers in its publication, "The American Rifleman."
NRA membership includes hundreds of local and state government leaders, 25 Congressmen in the last Congress and former President Richard M. Nixon.
The gun lobby uses its political contacts and pays attention and money to sympathetic politicians. The dominant shareholders of Olin Corporation gave $345,000 to the Committee to Re-elect the governor, 972, before the federal law went into effect disclosure of contributions went into effect.
After the 1968 Gun Control Act
Garden gossip growing
SCRABBLE, VA. —My sister Patsy sent us a book for Christmas, and life around this farm for the past month hasn't changed much. Unlike U.S. chattier, for one thing. My wife is talking to the philodendron, and I am arguing politics with the rubber tree. It is hard to get any work done.
The book is "The Secret Life of Plants" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It was
published by Harper and Row in 1973, but things are always a little late finding their way to Rappahannock County.
The authors begin their account with the experiments of Clevie Backster, a lied detector in 1966, out of sheer curiosity, Backster hooked up his polygraph to a dracaena in his apartment, amazement, when he watered the plant, the polygraph
registered emotion. The plant was saying, "Thank you." When Backster thought about burning a leaf with a match, the polygraph registered panic. The plant was saying, "You beast!"
Once you get to know them, plants will talk about anything. The rubber树, for example, is grown morning after Sen. Carl Curts defeated Sen. Jake Javits for whatever it was they were put out a two-inch rubber plant put out a two-inch schrooted and positively chorted.
Other experiments followed in the United States, in the Soviet Union, in India and elsewhere. What the experiments appeared to indicate is that plants have feelings. Plants are afraid of pain; they respond to affection; they have
The gardenias, as you might expect, are on the lateral side. When one of them started gloating about the ouster of F.
(C) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
By James Kilpatrick
a flair for musical criticism;
they suffer from the sukis and
the blanks. When they drink too
deep, they complain of wet
feet.
"Good morning, Phil," she cried. I looked around. My mind was drawn to the philodendron. "Howza boy?" she asked. "Sleep well?" She went to an aloe. "How are you?" she asked. "How many thoughts thought she had gone bananas.
My wife read the book first. I was down at the greenhouse one morning, just putter around, when she came in.
"Don't think that," she said firmly. "The bird of paradise kills us when we think thinking. It doesn't like it." Sure enough, the bird of paradise was plainly offended. A lizard climbed up and attacked the lemon tree looked sour.
Edward Hebert as chairman of House Armed Services, I threatened to prune its two top branches. The gardenia started to cry. It's hard to argue with a weepy gardenia.
Then I read the book. Now we have the gabbiest place in the county. To be sure, we had been talking to the birds and to the collies all along, but the birds are flighty and the collies aren't interested in much besides sports and the stock market.
Our neighbor, Mrs. Carney, the colonel's wife, read the book, too. She is a no-nonsense what to think of it. But on New Year's Day she transplanted a couple of pine trees, smacked the mounded earth with her hands and gave it to them straight.
Backster and his fellow experimenters believe that some plants have enough electrical potential to operate small switches on remote request. It also seems possible that plants, which cannot tell a lie, could be used as witnesses.
"If you burns don't grow," she said, "I'll pull you up by the roots."
passed, the lobby went to work by writing letters to hunters and gun owners and by influencing writers and editorialists for magazines such as Field and Fire Guns and Ammo, and Arrows.
Those are pretty smart pine trees. Now they salute whenever she walks by, and they're growing every day.
The pro-gun control lobby in Washington consists of one part lobbyist for the National Council for a Responsible Firearms Policy. Various other groups, such as Common Cause and women's groups, support and include it in their lobbying efforts, but their effectiveness is minimal.
Harrington wrote in his Nation article, "The pre-gun control forces tend to be governmental agencies concerned with crime prevention, religious and civic organizations whose primary activities lie elsewhere, citizen action groups spread thin across the entire country. Some of these public figures who lend their names and time to the cause." One of the overriding problems obstructing the enforcement of the compromise federal gun control bill, one that would appease most of both groups, is the exaggerated, emotional language used by groups to look like bands of extremists or dangerous fanatics.
Gun enthusiasts call gun controllers Communists or fascists, dedicated to the taking away of all arms from the citizenry and then establishing a totalitarian government.
Neither image is true. Progn control people are real residents, lawyers, policemen, teachers, farmers and labor leaders. They are in the everyday life of everyday American life.
Gun controllers hint that hunters, gun sportsmen and collectors are sadistic, blood-thirsty and careless people who insist on being oblivious to the problems of increasing crime.
Groups and individuals including the American Baptist Convention, AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, John Glenn, Warren Beatty, Joe Lombardi and Archibald Cox have supported gun control legislation.
Both groups will be vying to influence the 9th Congress on the issue of gun control during the campaign, but a younger, newer and more liberal Congress, which is replacing several older committee chairmen, the chances of winning as assuring are better than before.
The gun lovers, too, are normal people who have learned to band together to protect their sport and their rights. Most of NRA's time and money is spent sponsoring programs in marksmanship and firearm safety, shooting skills training and fund-raising Matches and selecting the U.S. rifle and pistol teams for competition in the Olympic and Pan-American games.
The leading Congressional gun control advocates, Harrington, Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind, and Sen. Edward Kendall, a former police office, and Kennedy has said he might introduce a bill this year.
Before the bumper stickers reappear and before the new statistics on murder and suicide by gun are given to a police officer, you perhaps both sides of the gun control controversy should work out a compromise bill of their own.
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Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor'a judgment. Students must provide their name, year in school and home town; faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.