4A
Friday, March 3,1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: GUNS OUT OF HAND
Beware of Old West mentality
The days of the Wild West are long gone. But the proposed law that would allow more Kansans to carry concealed guns promises a revival.
The idea that law-abiding citizens should be able to defend themselves against a violent, gun-toting world is fine, in theory. The National Rifle Association and proponents of such a law would maintain that the Second Amendment to the Constitution was based on this principle. But those opposed to restrictions on guns hope to subdue debate on the subject in a muddled, chicken-and-egg scenario: What comes first: the lawbreaker or the gun?
Popular bumper stickers and mottos state: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," or, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."
One would be hardpressed to find such short, simple summaries of the gun issue on the side of restrictions. This problem is not simple, and statistics and careful scrutiny of other countries' gun laws do not lend credence to such gross generalizations.
LEGAL OR ILLEGAL?
First of all, just about any police officer, especially one in a large metropolitan area like Kansas City, would point out that most guns used by criminals are pieces of junk. They are usually old, rusted handguns or sawed-off shotguns that police would be afraid to fire. However, they are pieces of junk that once probably were purchased legally, only to be stolen and resold illegally. In other words, the proliferation of guns, even those purchased legally, increases the amount of gun-related crimes.
PAPER-THIN CRIME BILL
What else does this mean? The portion of last fall's crime bill that
The proposed law that would ease restrictions on concealed guns may put Kansas into a dangerous frame of mind.
banned 19 types of semi-automatic weapons is as thin as the paper it is printed on. Criminals aren't carrying AK-47s down Main Street. To reduce it to criminal logic, they're big, bulky and difficult to hide. But U.S. senators and representatives, trying to make a compromise between the vigilant public and NRA lobbyists, tackled the weapons that many voters believed to be the worst offenders. Panicked constituents breathed a collective sigh of relief.
STRICTER CONTROL UP NORTH
Canada's laws and restrictions illustrate how gun-control laws should be handled.
In general, Canada's restrictions are much tighter than the United States'. Registration of handguns has been required since 1934. There is no nationally required registration in the United States. Canada banned fully automatic assault weapons in 1978. Canada has responded to an increase in urban violence (a fraction of what it is in this country) with stricter gun control, not legislation to increase gun ownership, like the law being considered in Kansas.
Furthermore, police often remind the public that a gun in the house increases the gun owner's chances of being shot or killed by an attacker. It also heightens the danger of children who may have access to the guns.
Have those who so energetically promoted the cowboy mentality of frontier America as a virtue failed to consider that it may have been this frame of mind that got us into trouble in the first place?
Don't let the "Save yourself, pack a piece" crowd snow you under.
MATT GOWEN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Robert Tapley / KANSAN
Muslim greetings; Hallmark doesn't care to send cards
There I was in the greeting card aisle, "Bar mitzvah" cards to the left, "With Deepest Sympathy" cards to the right, "Happy birthday" cards above and the "You are so special" cards below.
The choice was easy. Don't get any. I don't know anyone Jewish; no one I know is dead, and so far, no one special is in my life. My dilemma was and still is that I am a Muslim who wanted to buy an Islamic greeting card but have been continually ignored by greeting card companies.
The business sector has ignored races and religions for too long. Some people still have trouble finding the right color pantyhose or the right color of make-up. It's like we don't exist. Next to light-skinned angels, there are more pictures of cows and little rats on greeting
For those who didn't read my last column, Ramadan, a holy month of fasting, has ended. A three-day celebration called Eid-ul-Fitr marks its end. It is one of the most celebrated holidays in the religion of Islam.
Millions of people in the U.S. celebrate this holiday. Yet for years I have been buying blank cards because the companies who say that they have the ways to say we care don't take Muslims into consideration.
STAFF
COLUMNIST
that something is being catered towards your culture, your beliefs, your likeness.
cards than people of other colors. Do you know how excited I was when I saw a greeting card with dark-skinned people on it? I acted like I had never seen them before. "Look, brown people!" Because it is exciting to know
Don't we like sending Kansas postcards to people in other states? I don't know anyone who sends Alaska postcards from Kansas.
I spoke with a senior representative at Hallmark inc. a few days ago. She told me they didn't make greeting cards for Islamic holidays. "We don't have them," she said. "I've never seen those." This kind and considerate representative said that Hallmark made cards for holidays that were celebrated nationwide. She also said that there had not been many requests for Muslim greeting cards.
I politely informed her that there
were millions of Muslims all across the United States, and an average Muslim would send out at least three to five Eid greetings in and out of the United States. She replied, "Maybe it's something we need."
Yes, we need them. No more blank or "Thinking of you" cards, I say. The representative said petitions and individual requests would encourage Hallmark to consider making such cards. She also pointed out that although Hallmark could produce some cards on a short cycle, it would be two years before Muslim holiday cards were produced on alarge scale.
What's two years? Well, it's two more years of nonrepresentation and ignorance and two more years of being an insider feeling like an outsider. For now, I will settle for a Kansas postcard. At this rate, I may even mail an Alaska postcard. What's the difference?
But if you want change, call 1-800-
HALLMARK or write to: Consumer
Affairs, Hallmark Cards, P.O. Box
419034, Kansas City, M64141.
A happy Eid Mubarak to all my friends and loved ones. I'll send a card in two years.
Muneera Naseer is a Lawrence in journalism and political science.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Private decisions affect other people
I was recently alarmed by Isaac Bell's column in the Feb. 7 Kansan.
What people do in their private lives, as Bell pointed out, is none of anyone else's business. Specifically, he was referring to the Christian outcry against including the phrase "sexual orientation" in Lawrence's human Relations Ordinance. He drew on an image of hundreds of church leaders across the nation declaring that God hates fags.
Actually God doesn't hate fags or any other person or persons who violate Biblical morality. Fred Phelps does not represent hundreds of church leaders or the true Christian faith.
What I do anytime, anywhere, with or without someone else does affect others. It does so on several fronts. First, if what I do privately involves no one else, it still involves me and reinforces the way I think. The way I think then influences how I approach the rest of my business, therefore affecting others.
My concern is with the idea that what I do privately (being no one else's business) correspondingly affects no one else. This flies in the face of common sense and is empirically untrue.
For example, if I choose to privately view legal pornographic material, will it not leave me in a state of mentally high sexual arousal and affect how I view and interact with the opposite sex?
Another example would be how my right as a consenting adult to have sex with another consenting adult affects others. A risk is run for pregnancy or infection of a disease or even emotional hurt. A risk, I said, and risk relates to vulnerability. An innocent child, infected future partners, tax or private dollars from many others to maintain care for a serious illness, the lack of trust in future relationships — all come under the heading of "affecting others".
This is why morality (specifically Biblical morality) is a higher law to live by, since it takes into consideration the implications of my choices in affecting others and measures them for the others' good as well as my own.
Rick Woodbridge
Topekajunio
Column exemplifies anti-Republicanism
If there was ever any question concerning the political slant of this campus, all one has to do is read Michael Paul's column "Republicans are right: let's do away with all government," from the Feb. 16 Kansan. Mr. Paul takes the typical liberal approach to Republican bashing. He confronts substantive issues and facts and deals with them on a purely emotional level. As a result, Mr. Paul relegates himself to a simple whiner, as opposed to a critic.
Matthew Couch Prairie Village senior
Sense of humor extinguished by hatred and ignorant jokes
I first heard the joke in the third grade. The class clown, Scott, said,
"Hey Colleen, know how to fit 5000 Jews in a Volkswagen? Stick 'em in the ashtray."
Nineteen years later, I still don't.
As I stood there dumfounded, he ran off, laughing and saying to the other kids, "She doesn't get it"
GUEST COLUMNIST
I don't get it how a human being, like me, who eats like me, sleeps like me and who has a brain like me could ever think something as horrific as the Holocaust could be made into a joke. I don't get how in 1995 a person, like me, could pick up a magic marker and
scrawl the word "nigger" on someone's door. I really don't get it when people laugh at "all them fags dyin' of AIDS."
I don't get how people who accept actions like that can look at themselves in the mirror every morning, or fall asleep at night.
In high school, I used to laugh at all kinds of jokes. I prided myself on having a quick sense of humor. I could tell you Catholic jokes that would melt the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I laughed when someone told a joke about nearly anything. In my mind, the joke was making fun of an absurd stereotype, clearly devoid of any truth.
When I laughed, I was poking fun at the human race for its ridiculous past of ignorance. People don't really mean this, I'd think. People are making fun of our past stupidity, just like me. Isn't it great, I'd think, that people now can truly see all others the same way they see themselves. Nobody uses words horrible, hateful words like "nigger" anymore. No one thinks the Holocaust is funny. Everybody knows that because a person is homosexual doesn't mean he is possessed by demon spirits and deserves to die, right?
The first time I encountered hatred was when my friend Robin was living at Hillel House in 1987. I stopped to persuade her to go on a Joe's run with me. In the 15 minutes it took her to find her shoes and grab her coat, someone had covered my windshield with obscene drawings, Swastikas and words like "Auschwitz or Bust" and "Jew Whore." Robin shrugged it off. "It happens," she said. I wanted to vomit.
Three years later my friend Andre and I were Christmas shopping. As we got on the mall escalator, a white woman with her husband and son got on behind us.
"That makes me sick," I heard her mumble. "Dirty nigger, dirty white trash."
I turned around to glare at her. She hissed at me, "What is your problem?" Her husband told her to calm down, that they'd be of the escalator soon, and they wouldn't have to look at "it" anymore. Her son looked away, embarrassed.
Andre stared straight ahead, unfazed. I said very loudly, "I don't believe people that ignorant are still living in the world." He looked at me and smiled. "Wake up," he said. "You're the one being ignorant now."
The other day my 7-year-old nephew told me that men who marry men would burn in Hell because they are bad, and God doesn't love them. I asked where he had heard that tidbit of information. He said "That's what Mom says." I laugh.
I don't laugh at many jokes now.
Colleen Ryckert is a Lenae senior in magazine Journalism.
KANSAN STAFF
Editors
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
News ... Carlos Tejada
Planning ... Mark Martin
Editorial ... Matt Gowen
Associate Editorial .. Heather Lawrenz
Campus ... David Wilson
Colleen McCain
Sports ... Gerry Fey
Associate Sports .. Ashley Miller
Photo ... Jarrett Lane
Features .. Nathan Olan
Design .. Brian James
Freelance .. Susan White
JENNIFER PERRIER
Business manager
MARK MASTRO
Retail sales manager
CATHERINE ELLSWORTH
Technology coordinator
Business Staff
Campus mgr ...Beth Pols
Regional mgr ...Chris Braman
National mgr ..Shelly Falevits
Coop mgr ..Kelly Connealy
Special Sections mgr ..Brigg Bloomquist
Production mgr ..JJ Cook
...Kim Hyman
Marketing director ..Mindy Blum
Promotions director ..Justin Froselone
Creative director ..Dan Gler
Classified mgr ..Lissa Kuseth
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin