[20810] in APO-L
Re: Partisan Political Activity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick Thompson)
Thu Aug 26 16:12:57 1999
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 15:12:05 -0500
Reply-To: Patrick Thompson <patrick.h.thompson@vanderbilt.edu>
From: Patrick Thompson <patrick.h.thompson@VANDERBILT.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Quodomine <satan_scores@HOTMAIL.COM>
To: <APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 12:35 PM
Subject: Re: [APO-L] Partisan Political Activity
> >Shortly after the story came out, another student on campus e-mailed the
> >chapter
> >and lambasted them for not using their time and effort to do something
more
> >effective such as lobbying for tighter gun control.
>
> Yuck. Gun Control debate. Sounds like a person with a political axe to
grind
> and enough whine to do it. If that person wanted other action, perhaps
> helping to end the cartoon violence by some sort of campaign or similar,
> more deeply rooted problem would be ok. There's debate over whther or not
> gun contrl would work. THere's no debate that the root causes of violence
> need to be addressed.
Not exactly true--I could say the exact opposite. If there were no guns,
anywhere, then no one would get shot. Thus, the must extreme possible gun
control position is undebateable. However, if all media (what you're
probably referring to when you talk about "root causes") was restricted to
just, say, Barney reruns, I think there'd still be violence. Whether media
is thus the root cause of violence is therefore open to debate (although
this is probably not the best venue for such debate).
> Lobbying for gun control, viewed largely as a "left wing" issue, is not
> appropriate.
Gun control is generally more associated with the leftward side of the
political spectrum, but look at the numbers--a significant portion of the
public support some degree of gun control. Thus, I wouldn't characterize
gun control as "left wing." Why don't we save that title for groups like
the last few communists floating around, and groups like that, OK? (I for
one am generally left-leaning, but I'm pro gun control, and I'm pro-life in
the "both abortion and the death penalty are social tragedies we should move
to end" sense. Thus, I'm by some standards both left-wing, in my gun and
death penalty stances, and right-wing, in my abortion stance--whereas I
doubt I'm really a political extremist to either end of the spectrum)
