My history with guns

I love the NRA. They just keep on coming at you. Their response to the recently released picture of Obama skeet shooting? “This isn’t something he has done very often because of how he is standing, how he has the gun mounted.” Well, as far as I am concerned, that pretty much destroys his credibility on the subject.

Now I do think the President’s use of skeet shooting to legitimize his position on gun safety was pretty lame. Whether or not he or anyone else calling for some rationality on this front has ever shot a gun is of no relevance whatsoever. That said, although I am not sure I can produce a photo, I do want to establish my own bona fides. When I was ten years old at my Jewish sleepover camp in the Pocono Mountains, I shot a 22 caliber rifle almost every day during afternoon activity period. If I can remember correctly, daily rifle practice was squeezed between arts and crafts and late afternoon swim period. Granted, that little 22 was no assault weapon, but I do think it had a high-capacity magazine of something like two. I realize now that I have failed to include this experience on my résumé for forty years. A tremendous oversight it would appear. Apparently, one needs to be an expert marksman to have a legitimate opinion about the thousands of people slaughtered every year in our country with a gun.

But let’s run with this argument for a while. So, men ought not to weigh in on women’s health issues given their lack of experience there. Actually, I’d vote for that. Guys who have never played professional football aren’t allowed to call sports talk radio stations anymore. Heck, I’m on board with that one too. People who have never been to war can’t send America off to fight another. Well, that doesn’t sound like too bad an idea either.

I plan on revising my cv in the morning. Do you think I should include my gun shooting summers under hobbies or philanthropic activities?

If College Presidents Won’t Speak Out, Who Will?

This hit the Chronicle of Higher Education this week

http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/if-college-presidents-wont-speak-out-who-will/

If College Presidents Won’t Speak Out, Who Will?

The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who served the University of Notre Dame as its president for 35 years, wrote an article in 2001 titled “Where are College Presidents’ Voices on Important Public Issues?http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/9201-where-are-college-presidents-voices-on-important-public-issues/” He began this way: “When I was a college president, I often spoke out on national issues, even when they didn’t pertain to academic life. Yet, nowadays, I don’t find many college presidents commenting on such issues.”

I will suggest that the silence has grown even more deafening in the decade since Father Hesburgh penned those words. This month, the silence was broken. Over 330 college and university presidents signed a letter, which I penned together with my colleague Elizabeth Kiss at Agnes Scott College, calling for the adoption of rational gun-safety legislation in our country. The letter and the names of all the presidents are posted on the Web site College Presidents for Gun Safety. Additional presidents are signing on every day, and other similar letters have been drafted by such prominent organizations as the Association of American Universities, which includes virtually every leading public and private research university in the country. Yes, the silence has been broken.

Father Hesburgh shared that back in 1957, he and one other president, John Hannah from Michigan State University, were members of the five-person U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He wrote about the angry letters he received for his public service and public stances, including when he was named to serve on President Ford’s Presidential Clemency Board at a time when draft dodgers and deserters from the Vietnam War were being considered for pardons. He wrote: “Painful as those days were, however, they taught a powerful lesson. We cannot urge students to have the courage to speak out unless we are willing to do so ourselves.”

I am incredibly proud that so many presidents have spoken out on the appalling level of gun violence in America today. There is no simple solution, but we all believe that part of the answer lies in requiring gun owners to be subject to background checks before they can acquire guns and that there needs to be reasonable limits on high-capacity guns and magazines. We also shared our collective opinion, based on the experience of managing hundreds of college campuses, that permitting faculty members and students to arm themselves on our campuses will make us all less safe-not more safe.

James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth College and past dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, my alma mater, authored an article soon after he left Dartmouth on why college presidents have removed themselves from the public stage (“Getting College Presidents Back on the Public Stage,” Harvard Magazine). He reminisced about the day when such presidents as Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945, played a significant role on the national political stage, among other things campaigning for the repeal of Prohibition. He cites A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933, arguing for America’s participation in the League of Nations. We also had Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945, speaking out against the Cold War policies of the Truman Administration.

And then Dr. Freedman speaks to today and the silence that comes from our offices. Presidents have plenty of critics, he shares, and who needs more of them, especially when so much of our job these days is raising funds from constituents? He quotes Justice Holmes: “Every idea is an incitement.” How true that is. He aptly notes the issue of length of tenure. The presidents cited above all enjoyed decades-long tenures. Today, college presidents serve an average six or seven years. Longevity does indeed provide some cover and certainly newly minted presidents might rightfully lack the confidence to survive an onslaught of criticism. All that said, I come back to Father Hesburgh’s challenge: How can we urge students to have the courage to speak out unless we are willing to do so ourselves?

I don’t suspect that the call to action on gun safety is the start of presidents speaking out on every issue the country faces. In fact, on most of those issues, I am pretty certain we wouldn’t agree. But on this one, in the face of the massacre in Sandy Hook and in the face of the countless deaths by gun violence across America every day, we do agree and we have chosen to speak.

Lawrence M. Schall
President
Oglethorpe University
Atlanta

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Lance

We don’t subscribe to the OWN Network at home, but I happen to be on the road tonight and my hotel carries the network on which Lance Armstrong is being interviewed by O. It’s about 40 minutes into what I think is a ninety minute show. There’s another 90 coming tomorrow, I believe. I’d read a lot over the last few days about what Lance was reported to have said, and more critically, what he didn’t say. I certainly got the impression that he had been cautious and even evasive. Upon watching, that’s not at all what I perceived.

Let me say right now that I have always admired Lance. I ride a little myself. Enough to appreciate what a brutal sport it can be. I suspected he doped as everyone in the sport did to compete at that level. And tonight, I will say I think he was brutally honest, and I admire him for that. I don’t think he knows yet why he was so defiant all these years. That’s ok by me. I don’t think most of us know how we are flawed let alone why we are flawed. We just are and we try hard not to be, at least most of us do.

Lance is just a man. He’s done some good in his life. He’s done plenty of wrong. He competed. He won. Those against whom he competed also doped. I don’t condone what he did. I have a really hard time understanding why he decided he needed to be so public in his defiance, but I also know that he won seven Tours and I didn’t win any. He’s cut from a different mold.

I didn’t expect to walk away from the interview feeling better about Lance, but I do. I am not sure he told the truth in response to every question tonight. Still, he was humble tonight and that is not a bad way to be, even if the humility comes very late.

Cigarettes don’t kill people, people kill people

One of the more ridiculous claims from the gun lobby is the mantra “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The conclusion that follows, of course, is that we don’t need any regulation controlling who can buy guns and what type of guns they can buy. And even if some regulation is permissible, we have plenty of gun laws already. We don’t need anymore.

Let’s take two other massive public safety issues our country has faced and see how well that argument holds up. For as long as I can remember, we have had laws prohibiting drunk driving, yet the number of deaths and the cost to society of people getting in their car and driving drunk was massive. We collectively decided we could do better. This didn’t become an issue that divided left from right. After all, it was all our children and relatives who were being killed. So what did we do? Did we say: “Heck, we already have enough laws here. We just need to enforce the ones we have.” Of course not. Too many people were being killed to sit passively by. So we enacted all sorts of new legislation lowering the legal limit, revising the penalties imposed, and requiring enhanced public education. Lo and behold, the death rate dropped.

Then we have cigarettes. There was a massive tobacco lobby much like the gun lobby who for years tried to convince us smoking was not all that dangerous. That ads designed to appeal to children to get them addicted to smoking were just fine. There is the First Amendment, after all, that protects free speech. Our forefathers smoked and they were the first real Americans. Jeez, when I come to think about it, even the first real Americans, the Native Americans, smoked. On the other hand, millions of people were needlessly dying, the costs to society were enormous. Might we figure out a saner, safer approach to this issue without removing the personal right of people to smoke? Of course we could and we have, and the results over time have been dramatically positive.

Why, then, can’t we do the same thing here? When people can buy guns without even a simple background check and arm themselves with weapons that ought to be reserved for the real army, not people’s militias, don’t we think we can do better? Do we really have all the right rules and regulations in place to protect us? I don’t think so.

I’m officially disgusted. How about term limits?

> Like most of the rest of America, I am really tired of politics. CNN had a story this morning about the milk cliff. Really? Is this what we have come to? Will we face the gun safety cliff when the new Congress convenes? Is there anything on which the two parties can agree? >
> I was listening to an interview with former President Clinton this morning talking about life after the presidency. Why, he was asked, does it seem like former presidents have managed to collaborate to accomplish things despite their political differences? Clinton, as we know, has a special relationship with the Bush 41 and a working relationship with W. His answer was pretty simple. Not one of them is running for office again and they can therefore ask themselves a more important question than “will this get me re-elected.” For Clinton, his question is this: Will it leave people better off or not? He knows that even though former presidents from different parties disagree on most everything when it comes to the big political questions, when it comes to doing what’s right, the differences tend to go away. There’s a lesson there for the gun safety debate. >
> I also think there’s a lesson there for our broken political system. How do we take away the incentive for our politicians in Washington to act only to get re-elected? How do we take away the influence of the lobbyists who line up to fill up the campaign pockets of those politicians? How about term limits? The two term limit for presidents dates back only to 1947 and we managed to get that amendment passed. How about extending that same limit to Congress? If every senator and congressperson knew he or she was two and done, I believe the disaster that is Washington would change. Given the single-digit approval rating of Congress, I even think we could get it passed. Maybe I am wrong, but can anyone tell me that the status quo is better? I am willing to listen.

Put a teacher in every gunshop

For a group that believes in smaller government and less taxes, the NRA certainly proposed a brilliant to solution to the gun safety crisis in our country. There are some 67,000 public elementary schools in America, some 100,000 public schools in all. At $100,000 per year to hire, train, and arm SWAT skilled police officers (and their part-time substitutes to cover them when they are sick or on vacation), we are talking ten billion dollars a year. We all know teachers and mental health professionals come cheap. Given all the teachers and counselor our schools have laid off because of the budget crisis, how about putting an educator in every gunshop? Makes a whole lot more sense to me.

If your schools are anything like the ones my kids went to, why stop at one police officer per school? I’d put one on the playground, one in the cafeteria, and at least four or five scattered around the complex. You can probably skip the library since we’ve likely let that professional go already and cut back library hours. And best I can tell, the people that come to schools and movie theatres and who knows where next loaded to the gills with automatic weapons have no plans to leave alive. I hardly think one cop somewhere in a sprawling building will deter them.

The NRA is a professional association disguised as a membership organization whose primary purpose is to fuel gun sales of its corporate sponsors. They are really good at what they do and horribly bad for America.

Of all the issues …

I find it fascinating that in just one week’s time, I have become one of the targets of those that oppose any regulation on guns, gun safety, and gun ownership in America. I am actually ok with all that — the statement I drafted that was signed by over 300 other college and university presidents is hardly a radical manifesto. In short, all we are asking for is that before private citizens can acquire a gun, that they go through some reasonable background check, that some rational limits be placed on what kinds of guns can be acquired, and that we be allowed to keep these deadly weapons off our campuses. I think we all find it hard to believe that people could take major issue with any of this, but we certainly know that’s the case. The NRA response, though, is just mind-boggling to me. In the 62 mass murder cases over 30 years examined by Mother Jones magazine, not one was stopped by an armed civilian. There was a sheriff’s deputy at Columbine who fired (and missed) four shots while 11 of the 13 victims were still alive. In August, NYC police officers opened fire on a gunman outside the Empire State Building and wounded nine bystanders. Then we have our self-anointed guardians in Florida who shoot unarmed youth because they felt “threatened”. And by the way, when was the last time you saw an armed security guard in your branch bank, as LaPierre claimed in his speech on Friday?
The simple truth, as expressed by columnist Charles Blow this morning in the New York Times, is that more guns equals more deaths. States with low gun ownership rates and reasonable regulations have lower deaths from guns. That, of course, is also true of nations. And from 2009 to 2012, states led by many of the same folks now pushing the more gun solution have cut public mental health services by over four billion dollars. I suppose they will now argue those funds out to be restored and re-directed to the NRA-backed “cop in every school” program. Brilliant.
Before last week, one could certainly have counted me on the pro-regulation side of the gun debate, but this issue of public policy was probably not among the ones on which I felt most passionate. It still probably isn’t, although it certainly has ascended. Most of what I have written about before addresses less glitzy things like the millions of American children living in poverty today, or the millions of young men locked up in prison for drug-related offenses at great cost to all of us, or the millions of students enrolled in failed schools. There is no outrage there. None at all. I just hope that the outrage almost of us feel right now on the gun safety issue ends up mattering.