4
Thursday, April 10, 1975
University Daily Kansas
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Gun laws extreme
Gun control is back in the news. Atty, Gen. Edward H. Levi has proposed federal legislation to outlaw the sale of all handguns and handgun with high rates of violent crimes. A Chicago organization is gaining exposure in its drive to outlaw all handgun ammunition.
Both proposals go too far.
There is no question that guns are too easy to get in this country, that too many people are killed each year with guns and that an immediate need exists for tough restrictions on gun sales, particularly handguns.
But Levi's proposal isn't the answer. Its constitutionality is questionable under the 2nd and 14th Amendments, and it simply goes beyond the realm of crime control under the restriction of law-abiding citizens.
The effort to ban all handgun ammunition, led by the Committee for Hand Gun Control, Inc., is even more poorly considered and objectionable. The organization has attempted to get the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban the sale of handgun ammunition, except to policemen, military personnel, licensed security guards and licensed pistol clubs, by declaring it a hazardous substance.
The commission will begin hearings shortly.
This effort has been called a back door attempt to ban handguns, which it is. It also goes far beyond its stated purpose.
A ban on handgun ammunition would include .22 caliber shells, a widely sold pistol ammunition. The problem is that the millions of people who own and enjoy .22 caliber rifles would also find themselves high and dry. There surely would be other duplications.
There are millions of people in this country who aren't "gun nuts," who don't devote all their waking hours to shooting and who don't see their guns as a sign of masculinity. These people don't keep pistols under their pillows or in their glove compartment. They TALK about hunting or perhaps just target shooting under safe and controlled situations.
Most of these people recognize that there is a need for greater control of firearms and will accept the necessities necessitated by such control.
But they shouldn't be trampled by an ammunition law that is too broad or a crime control measure that hits him, simply because of his life.
—John Pike
GOOD NEWS MY FELLOW AMERICANS...WE ARE
ABOUT TO EXPERIENCE AN UPTURN!'
"YOO HOO HENRY----"
Books FDR's monument
By STEVEN LEWIS Contributing Writer
Thursday, April 12, 1945. It is 1:15 p.m. Central War Time. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sits reading state papers in the living room of his "Little white house" in Warm Springs, Ga., while an artist paints his portrait.
SUDDENLY, the President raises his hand to his forehead. He says quietly, "I have a terrific headache." His hand falls to his side and he passes out. Within two hours President Roosevelt is dead from a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
has weathered the critical eyes of historians quite well.
Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of FDR's first year as subject of as many books the past 30 years as FDR. So far, he
NEVERTHELESS, there still isn't a national memorial to FDR in Washington, D.C. The government and the Roosevelt family have rejected plan after plan.
FDR said he wanted a simple memorial. Accordingly, a table-size block of granite was put in front of the National Archives in 1955. Soon, however, Congress and others thought a more massive monument was needed.
Since then, an American Stonehenge, a granite pinc wheel and a glorified rose garden have all been seriously considered. At the moment, the rose garden idea is being developed.
OF COURSE, FDR has
already been honored in many ways. For example, his likeness has appeared on the dime since 1945. However, the profile on the dime is that of Donald Truman as it does FDR. The addition of a hat, pin-nye glasses and a cigarette holder would make FDR more like Trump. DEM expect these accountements on the dime soon, however.
FDR WAS the only person elected to four terms as President. The 22nd Amendment, passed after Roosevelt's death, now limits a president to two terms.
Roosevelt's political acumen has helped make him a favorite subject of biographers. Within the 1960s, he published books about FDR have won
Pulpizer prizes. They are James McGregor Burns' "Roosevelt": The Soldier of Freedom" and Lash's "Eleanor and Franklin".
In addition, FDR's son Elliott published a sensational account of FDR's social life in a 1973 book, "An Untold Story—The Roosevelts of Hyde Park" Most of the Roosevelt family scorned the book, and it quickly became a bestseller.
"The FDR Memoirs" were published in 1973. Since FDR never lived long enough to write his memoirs, Bernard Asbell decided to write them for him. In 1984, he and Asbell did a credible job of imitating her father's writing style.
Bishop. Bishop talked with the few remaining members of Roosevelt's inner circle in an attempt to describe the precise state of Roosevelt's health the last year of his life.
The latest in Roosevelt books is "FDR's Last Year" by Jim
BISHOP'S book clearly reveals that Roosevelt was a very sick man the last year of his life, suffering from hardening of the arteries and congestive heart failure. The Washington insiders wasn't whether FDR would survive his fourth term but how many more months he would linger on.
Undoubtedly, FDR's place in history will be a high one. H. G. Wells called him "A great emperor who unmatrized philosophy." Clearly, FDR was the right man at the right time.
Readers respond
To the Editor:
Oatmeal Man (he used to make his own breakfast) says that he does not expect the South to give him food. He is sending all available naval vessels to South Vietnam to assist in refugee evacuation and to take whatever steps he can to insure that evacuation.
Someone had better decide where the government of Nguyen Van Thieu is to be
It should be pointed out that this time there is no Taiwan off the coast for the government and refuges to run to.
located because soon there will be only the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Thieu needs a new spot to roost
Thomas S. McClenaghan Lawrence Senior
Viet orphans
To the Editor:
Praise the Lord, Nam-Fans! We Americans are showing the world how humane we truly are. Yes, we are washing our hands clean of that nasty Vietnam bomb and we are happy ending. We are saving precious orphans (most of whom are orphans because of
our help), saving them, mind you, from the horrors of communism. If we can't teach the old Vics how to make our way work there, by damn, we'll train the children here.
Unpolished news reports on the April 7 "Today" show indicated that those Communists treat the orphans with the best respect and want a South Vietnam orphan to grow up in North Vietnam?
Maybe it's kind of sad that the only remaining resource that Vietnam has that we didn't destroy with bombs are now bauling back to the U.S. as another trophy for our efforts.
Crime solution: jail poor
In my last column I quoted a Cleveland psychiatrist's arguments that psychiatry offers no hope of rehabilitation for those who murder, rage or rob, go to prison and then come out to commit the same crimes again and again.
in such society of persons who, if their freedom is not abridged, would use it to inflict serious injuries on others." Bantfield argues, "If some people's rights are not abridged by law enforcement agencies, that of others will be abridged by lawbreakers."
A. Stuber
A. Stuber
14, USN Ret
Okay. So how about this as a solution? There is abundant statistical evidence to show that poorly educated, poor minority group males aged 17 to 24 commit most of the "high fear" crimes in this country. Why not preventive detention camps all the poor, uneducated minority group people for all of those young years when they are deemed to be high crime risks?
to grant probation, even to second- and third-time offenders, on the assumption that because our prisons were such failures, a criminal left within society had a better chance of rehabilitation than one who was locked up.
**YOU THINK I've lost my mind? The idea isn't original with me. Political scientist E. C. Bantell, in his book "The Unheavenly City," advocates that we should stop populations in penal colonies before they have committed any crimes.
"If abiding the freedom of persons who have not committed crimes is incompatible with the principles of society, so also, is the presence
Psychiatrist Richard A. Sch-
By Carl Rowan
Copyright 1975 Field Enterprises, Inc.
Schwartz warned that "since a disproportionate amount of
crime was committed by the poor and members of minority groups, the present high crime rates bred resentment across social class and racial lines, greatly impeding the development of social justice. Another problem is complaining, accommodating acceptance of high rates of serious crime is that the public might eventually become so outraged that it will be willing to tolerate
Schwartz said a growing number of judges were deciding
Schwartz proposed, then, that an it 18-year-old robbed a liquor store, statistical logic required that he was until he was 40. He argued:
We already have disturbing evidence of this. Richard Nixon's forensic investigation has the death penalty certain crimes has been taken up in numerous state legislatures. Vice President Obama advocated mandatory life imprisonment without parole for drug pushers.
increasing infringements on basic civil liberties and freedoms."
Schwartz said we ought to be more aware that "most crimes are committed by young men in their teens and twenties. . . By then reaches age 40 his criminal power is essentially over."
AND SCHWARTZ, for all unsupposed concern about civil liberties and freedom, wound up his paper with a crime "solution" which, while not so shocking as the Banfield proposal to look up ghetto youth, is most certainly repressible.
"Although it may seem at first glance excessive cruel to imprison a convicted 18-year-old rapist or armed robber for 22 years, the statistical likelihood of such a first offender committing at least one additional serious crime is so low that it is even more cruel to the potential victim of a subsequent violent crime not to remove the offender from society until the aging process has diminished his criminal drives. Emerging from prison at age 40, the released offender would still be in danger of being wronged, could expect to have ample years available to him to rebuild his life and pursue vocational or family goals."
SCHWARTZ didn't say what he TURNED to dream that the "aging process" during 22 years in prison would turn an anti-social* 18-year-old into a real-aged, law-abiding 40-year-old.
Egypt at fault
To the Editor:
Schwartz's, bottom-line "cure" is probably his most persuasive evidence that even a person who haven't have the answer to crime.
As an Israeli student at the University of Kansas, I wish to express my views on Henry Kissinger's mission in the Middle East. This failure to reach an agreement between Israel and Egypt.
THE EFFORTS to embark upon a step-by-step movement towards peace in the Middle East through the good offices of the United States failed to produce results because of one main and overriding reason: it made no impression that it would make an impact toward ending the state war against Israel. For Carlo, the talks conducted by Kissinger had the sole objective of a
military disengagement arrangement, which would mean maximum strategic advantage on the ground for Egypt.
ISRAEL'S offers of territorial concessions were met with Egyptian demands that added pressure to Israel's surrender its most important defensive positions in the nasal desert in return for ... what. Who knows what Egypt is asking them or just say? Virtually nothing.
I think this made a mackery of the whole objective of the step-by-step policy towards the security peace between Israel and Egypt.
willing to take any serious steps in this direction. Cairo rejected any commitment to end the state of war in return for the most important and strategic mountain passes in Sinai and the oil fields there. Egypt insisted on another military engagement disengagement agreement, which would mean only an Israeli withdrawal and an Egyptian military advance...
AS A POLICY it was extraordinary, designed to overcome the refusal of the Arab states during the past 28 years to recognize the state of Israel and their attitude to treat Israel on anything but military terms.
Hence, the idea was developed to reach out for something political. Although it was considerably less than peace, it was at least something credible enough to establish a government in which the seeds of a gemini peac might germinate.
Let us not forget that the step-by-step policy was from the outset conceived as an instrument of policy to try to bring about a visible and tangible movement toward peace between the two countries.
Unfortunately, Egypt was not
It was this Egyptian intrigueness, its refusal to grant anything even resembling political substance that would have been acceptable (and not only smiles and peaceful phrases to tourists) and its transparent determination to use the talks for military strategic gains, that led to a backlash against suspension of the negotiations.
THE BEST President Sadat would offer, and even this only after arduous negotiation, was a rather vague military formula about the "non-use of force" in the war. The United States continued the state of war.
Israel was ready this time, even more than many times before, to make very tangible and far-reaching concessions, not only in words but in real acts, in full knowledge of the military risks involved, if only Egypt and its president would join it in the first steps away from the prospect of peace. This, unfortunately, Egypt refused to do. Ranebald Goldman
Raphael Goldman
Tel-Aviv Sophomore
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas weekly
newspaper, *The Kansan*, and at
examinations period. Second-class postage and
lawrence. Rm 6969. Subscriptions to mail are $8
and $15. Student fees are $13. $1.35 a semester, paid through the student activity
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom—664-4810
Advertising—664-4358
Circulation—664-3048
Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised in the Kannan are offered regardless of tree, ered or national optimum Orient Expressced availability. The School of Journalism at the University of Kannan. School of Journalism at the University of Kannan.
Editor
John Pike
Associate Editor Campus Editor
Craig Stock Dennis Ellsworth
Business Manager
Live Rece
Advertising Manager Assistant Business Manag
Darbien Arboreus
Caroline Howe
News Adviser Suranne Shaw
Business Adviser Mel Adams