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Opinion
Mar. 09, 2008
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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: 'But I'll get shot for being late with my homework!'

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ
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Last year, my own Nevada state senator, Republican Bob Beers, proposed a law which would have "allowed" Nevada government-school teachers to carry concealed weapons on school grounds -- if they wished to do so -- after passing an arduous training course.

Needless to say, there was a public outcry, and not the outcry one would have expected if one were under the impression Nevada and America are still freedom-loving states with governments whose powers are limited by the written Constitution.

Since we must apparently spell everything out, slowly, what I mean is that the outcry should have been: "What? Teachers need some kind of special 'permission' to carry firearms, in a nation with a Second Amendment guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms 'shall not be infringed,' and an added 14th Amendment prohibiting local authorities from infringing those federal rights?"

If it had been me, I suspect a legislative decree ordering the immediate arrest of any administrator of any government building who made any effort to prevent otherwise law-abiding adults from walking in bearing pistols or Browning Automatic Rifles would have been more to the point.

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    • Instead, Sen. Beers' modest proposal was met with howls of outrage and quickly laughed out of the building.

    My favorites were the cogent letters mailed in by local schoolchildren -- am I the only one who suspects a little coaching by the schoolmarms? -- protesting, "No, no! Now the teacher will shoot me for being late with my homework!"

    I was reminded of this when a reader wrote in, last week: "Dear Mr. Suprynowicz: Funny, you'd think that with all the press coverage of that terrible shooting at Northern Illinois University, there'd be some mention of the one the previous month."

    The writer was referring to the two Palestinian terrorists, recently released from an Israeli prison, who on Jan. 25 infiltrated the Mekor Hayim High School Yeshiva in Kfar Etzion, south of Jerusalem.

    The incident was reported in the Jerusalem Post of Jan. 26:

    The day before, the daily paper reported, "Two terrorists ... armed with knives and a pistol, infiltrated the kibbutz -- in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc -- and sneaked into a building used by the high school, run by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz."

    The kibbutz is surrounded by a fence, but the terrorists had been able to cut a hole through the fence undetected, a paramedic in Hatzallah Judea and Samaria told The Post.

    "They entered a classroom where counselors were holding a meeting, and stabbed two of them," the Israeli newspaper reports.

    Good heavens. And once the counselors were out of the way, how many students were massacred?

    Oh, I'm sorry. Were you not paying attention? This was in Israel.

    "Two of the counselors were armed and managed to overpower and kill the terrorists, without giving them a chance to fire their pistol," a Hatzallah spokesman said.

    They plugged 'em.

    The wounded teachers? They suffered "non-life-threatening injuries."

    A little happier ending then in any of our own recent school attacks. And why? Come on, you can do it. The teachers in Israel are different ... how?

    For some reason, no reports so far of any of the students of the Mekor Hayim High School Yeshiva in Kfar Etzion being shot by their teachers for failure to turn in their homework. But we'll keep our ears open.

    -- -- --

    The Associated Press reported Feb. 16 Senate Republicans were protesting that "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is trying to protect the two leading Democrats for president by shielding them from a difficult vote on an issue that many rural voters consider crucial" -- a proposal, lodged in the current public lands bill, to restore the constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to carry their firearms in the national parks for self-defense, without having them unloaded and disassembled.

    But why should the vote be "difficult"? Every candidate for national office who I've interviewed since 1994, regardless of party, has insisted, "I support the Second Amendment."

    (Admittedly, my own congresswoman, cheerful gun-grabber Shelley Berkley, couldn't resist adding a few words of ridicule for my own stance that this means Americans have the right to bear nuclear weapons -- though she still can't seem to find the part of that amendment she "supports" which says "except for really big, intimidating weapons that we in Washington want to keep to ourselves.")

    (The rhetorical trap the victim disarmament gang lay for us when they urge us to admit we don't "need" nuclear weapons, for those who have forgotten, is that they next get us to admit we don't "need" Abrams tanks, machine guns, or recoilless rifles. Pretty soon it turns out all we "need" is a non-functioning replica flintlock to carry in the Fourth of July parade. Don't be baited into switching to an argument about "needs" when the topic is "rights.")

    Why shouldn't Sen. Reid just let Sens. Clinton and Obama -- and big-government nanny-stater John McCain, for that matter -- prove they mean what they say, by allowing them to vote to restore the vital constitutional right of Americans to bear self-defense weapons in government parks and forests, especially after all the recent murders of unarmed tourists in those enclaves -- by criminals curiously unaffected by these gun bans?

    Because they're all lying, of course, and Harry knows it. The gun-grabbers live in terror of having to expose their real position on this issue, ever since Bill Clinton was forced to admit it was primarily his own party's radical, hoplophobic, gun-grabbing ways that managed to dump control of both houses of Congress into Republican hands in 1994.

    Has no one else noticed the deafening silence from this entire gang in response to all the recent multiple shootings by wing-nuts who recently stopped taking their Prozac?

    There's an obvious "code of silence" on calls for new gun controls ... which I predict will last until -- let me gaze into my crystal ball, here -- um ... late November 2008.

    -- -- --

    A strange local fellow who advocates the death penalty for marijuana smokers keeps writing in to protest that Suprynowicz is "against sensable" gun control.

    I certainly am against it -- even if you spell it "sensible." I'm also against "sensible Bible, book and newspaper control" (barred by the First Amendment) and "sensible chattel slavery" (barred by the 13th Amendment).

    Why don't judges, politicians and Republicrats regularly try to convince me that, "Of course nothing in the 13th Amendment bars a certain reasonable amount of slavery; after all, nothing is absolute! Just as you can't yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, so is the government free to impose a reasonable amount of forced labor on the people"?

    Or did I just describe the Internal Revenue Service?

    Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/.



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    Brian Lee wrote on April 08, 2008 09:23 PM: Thank God that common sense is still alive. We, as freedom loving Americans, need to stand up to ignorance and require our government to abide by their oath. "To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic". Vin, please keep up the fight, I will continue to reload and carry concealed to exercise my GOD GIVEN rights.


    Bill Smith wrote on March 17, 2008 06:18 AM: The Girls Scouts support gun control. I would not allow them to set up a booth near any of my businesses. Let me guess; only government workers are hired by that gun store? I would want any of them because most do not even know how to properly use a firearm. Plus, I don’t want any statists working for me.


    Godzilla wrote on March 15, 2008 02:19 PM: People used to carry their hunting rifles onto planes. It used to be that high schools would have shooting ranges. Kids were taught the proper use of firearms.

    My husband carries a gun to work every day. He works in a gun store. They hired many retired military persons, police officers, a DEA guy, etc. Do you think there is any crime in that shopping mall? It did raise a few eyebrows when the gun store opened in an upscale shopping plaza. People threatened to protest, but unfortunately it didn't pan out. It would have been good advertising. My daughter had a girl scout cookie booth in front of the store which upset some of those anti-gun GS people, but I'm sure she was the safest girl scout in the entire world. She got lots of donations to send cookies to the armed forces guys too.

    Taxes are way out of control, but we are all slaves to one thing or another if it weren't taxes we would still need food, water, and shelter...


    Bill Smith wrote on March 13, 2008 05:03 AM: Our first communist president, Abraham Lincoln, was the first to have “sensible slavery”.



    http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan30.htm


    Mike Danger wrote on March 12, 2008 11:47 AM: >Why don't judges, politicians and
    >Republicrats regularly try to
    >convince me that, "Of course nothing
    >in the 13th Amendment bars a certain
    >reasonable amount of slavery;

    They alread did Vin.

    In several combined Supreme Court cases around 1916 or 1918 the Supremes said that the military draft was "sensible slavery" and that the federal government could draft slaves and use the slaves to fight its wars. Something the feds did till the end of the Vietnam war which was the last "sensible slavery" was used by the American government.

    Of course they didn't call it "sensible slavery". For that matter they didn't even call it slavery. They just used a bunch of mumbo jumbo to say it wasn't slavery at all.


    Bill Smith wrote on March 10, 2008 05:08 AM: There is no such thing as a law-abiding citizen in these United States.


    ralph wrote on March 10, 2008 04:25 AM: All of the crooks and bad guys out there must smile at how easy their job is getting. They probably lol when they hear of even more outcry for gun control. It used to be robbery etc. had an element of risk to it. Any bad guy or *wingnut* out there now is certainly aware that the law-abiding general public has been disarmed in most places. The crooks and bandits, being the gosh-darn rule breakers they are, still have guns most of the time. Whoopee!!


    Bill Smith wrote on March 10, 2008 04:01 AM: It is funny how we keep getting back to government schools. Close them all down and have parents responsible for teaching and many of our problems will go away.

    By the way, getting a CCW makes concealed carrying a privilege, not a right. But then again government goons and the people who vote don’t have a clue.


    Garry Dale wrote on March 09, 2008 11:31 PM: I am appalled at how many employers refuse to allow their workers to even bring their legal firearms on premises. There has been a HUGE increase in Robberies in Las Vegas the past three years and there are some pretty bad areas that law abiding citizens must travel through to get to work. Employers would like what? to have the guns left in cars in the auto theft capitol of the US. Or just go unprotected.
    This said, I think that even passed this law would see the most opposition from the school administrators. The attitude toward guns in our ultra left school system is appalling.

    Keep writing good stuff


    John F wrote on March 09, 2008 07:00 PM: Mr. Perez,

    My point is that the right to carry a gun is not an unlimited one, no matter what your age. You may not carry a gun onto an airplane, nor may you carry one into a courthouse. It seems to me that keeping 18-year-old kids from bringing guns to school is a reasonable precaution when their fifteen-year-old cohorts don't have the option of carrying a gun.

    The right to keep and bear arms is ensconced in the Constitution. Unless and until the second amendment is changed or repealed that right will be the law of the land. But please, gun lovers, don't insult my intelligence by trying to tell me that the widespread availability of guns makes me safer. The fact that I can carry a gun if I so desire makes me more free, not safer. Given a choice between freedom and safety, though, I'd rather be free.


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