Showing posts with label concealed carry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label concealed carry. Show all posts

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Pistol envy as public policy


People in Louisiana always have been a little bit nuts.

Sometimes, that's a good thing. When you enter the realm of public policy and self-governance, usually not.

Chalk up this latest news of Louisiana Whack, as reported by The Associated Press, as a definite "not, no, nuh uh":
Former Gov. Mike Foster is featured in an NRA radio ad supporting a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 6 ballot that would set a tougher standard for restricting weapons use and remove a provision that spells out legislative authority to limit concealed handguns. 
Supporters of Amendment No. 2 say the change would guard against possible future Supreme Court rulings that might affect the Second Amendment. 
In the ad, paid for by the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, Foster says he's voting for the amendment to "guarantee our rights to own a gun in Louisiana no matter what happens in Washington."
BEHOLD, the breakdown of civil society in Louisiana -- what there ever was of it -- continues apace. This kind of bat-sh*t crazy constitutional amendment is not the sign of a healthy society or culture.

It is the sign of people who believe that civil society is either a) not possible any longer, or b) undesirable. If you were to gauge what there is of the "Louisiana mind" today, you'd probably find that it's a little of both.

That the Legislature sent to voters a measure making it difficult for the state to regulate firearms at all and seemingly all-but-erasing authority for government to regulate the carrying of concealed weapons is a profound loss of faith in, if not the rule of law itself, the ability of the state to maintain order.

Or at least enough order that it wouldn't be considered normal to pack heat -- hidden heat, no less. No, ascendant is the idea of concealed firearms as so crucial to individual freedom and well-being that the state has precious little right to interfere or regulate. Welcome back to the Wild West. And good luck prosecuting gangbangers on gun charges before they actually pull the trigger and cap somebody's ass.

NEVERTHELESS, I bet it passes. Crazy does as crazy is, and if you look at the numbers and the newspapers, you realize that only a bunch of flat-out lunatics could create the monument to dysfunction and delusion that is the Gret Stet.

Louisiana never has been big on the rule of law. Now, however, it threatens to go "all in" on the rule of force. Yeah, that should work out well in America's largest insane asylum.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hot boudin . . . cold cush cush!
C'mon Tigers, shoot, shoot, shoot!


State legislatures need to come with "black box" warnings, much like pharmaceuticals with potentially deadly side effects -- when stupid people get a hold of them, really bad things can happen.

And with Ernest Wooten in occupying a desk in the Louisiana House, that black box ought to cover an entire side of the 34-story state capitol. This story in the Baton Rouge Advocate is scary testimony to that:

Proposed state legislation would make it legal for some students and faculty to carry handguns on college campuses as a “deterrent” against the wave of college shootings in Baton Rouge and nationwide.

State Rep. Ernest Wooten, R-Belle Chasse, is proposing the controversial bill that could arm more people on campuses from dormitories to classrooms.

“We’ve got a problem,” Wooten said, “and maybe it’ll be a deterrent if one of these disturbed persons or whackos thinks, ‘If I go in shooting, they may shoot back.’”

In the last few months, two international students at LSU were murdered in their on-campus apartment. Weeks later, a Louisiana Technical College student in Baton Rouge murdered two students in a classroom before killing herself.

The recent string of college murders nationwide began with the rampage murders of 33 Virginia Tech students last year.

State Commissioner of Higher Education Joseph Savoie said Wooten’s proposal is going in the wrong direction. There should be fewer guns at colleges, not more, Savoie said.

Too many young people are still emotional and immature when it comes to firearms, he said, noting that campuses have already beefed up security measures statewide.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to arm a bunch of excitable students,” Savoie said.

Wooten’s House Bill 199 would make it legal to carry licensed concealed handguns on all state colleges, from technical schools to universities.

Not only that, but the bill also would forbid colleges from enacting policies to limit the rights of gun owners from carrying concealed handguns on campuses.

FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. GOD. I mean, really. Is there really anybody with half a brain who thinks that it would be a good thing to have a bunch of college kids packing heat?

Really?

Obviously, not all college kids are the same, and not all are excitable doofuses. On the other hand, if we can't always trust students to do something as simple as behave at football games -- or not drink themselves into oblivion long before their 21st birthdays -- isn't it pretty safe to assume it's probably not a good idea to arm a bunch of kids who still await maturation of the risk-aversion part of their brains?

College bars have double-drunk Tuesdays for a reason, people. It's called "getting rich."

Can't wait until all the boys from Kappa Tappa Kegga -- armed to the teeth, because it's the "cool" thing to be -- stream out of Friday-afternoon classes and into a Friday-night alcoholic haze. Maybe if Rep. Wooten is lucky, one of them will accidentally shoot and kill America's Next Campus Shooter.

Or maybe they'll just kill some poor Phi Beta Kappa as they show off their chrome-plated manhood while trying to impress some girl.

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it: Wooten thinks pistol-packing collegians would be a "deterrent" to the next Seung-Hui Cho.

“We’ve got a problem,” Wooten said in The Advocate story, “and maybe it’ll be a deterrent if one of these disturbed persons or whackos thinks, ‘If I go in shooting, they may shoot back.’”

Uhhhhhh . . . why would that be, when all the recent campus shooters ended their rampages by putting a bullet IN THEIR OWN HEADS? For future reference, the threat of death is no deterrent to suicidal whackos.

The key word being "whacko" . . . or "suicidal" -- take your pick.

Unfortunately, neither is stupidity a deterrent for some people seeking public office . . . or the voters who put them there. It really doesn't take a MENSA candidate to figure out that if you want more armed people on campus to deal with crazed killers, you hire more campus cops.

It's as simple as that. Unless you're paid to make the laws.