CONCEAL THE SIGNS!
Concealed guns are now legal in Kansas. I don't know which is worse, the idea of all these wackjobs walking around armed or the marring of our public spaces with these hideous no-gun signs.
I'm guessing the wackjobs were secretly packing before it even became legal, so I'll go with the signs.
The first time I saw one was while I was visiting Ben and Erin. I was walking Mabel near the county health department, and I noticed an ugly, off-putting sign on the front door. I asked Erin what was with the awful clip art on a government building — I'm a big believer that government buildings should be aesthetically pleasing, awe-inspiring even; their construction should not go to the lowest bidder, but to the best builder, and their entryways should not be littered with homemade clutter — and she informed me that the clip art, far from being the handiwork of an unimaginative health department clerk, was in fact the official government sign.
So, not only do we have to put up with wackjobs armed to the teeth, we have to hang big ugly signs on the halls of government and commerce and learning and worship to tell the wackjobs they're not welcome. AND, the signs have to be infantile and conspicuous because the wackjobs are illiterate rednecks who only understand big symbols, especially if they are circular and red and look vaguely like a target.
The other day I was walking to campus and was struck by a big metal sign showing said symbol with a bit of text about how guns are forbidden on university property. I literally stopped in my tracks. Of course they are forbidden! I shouted to myself. Of course they are! This is a Goddamn university! Some things go without saying. It would be like posting a sign at the entrance to campus saying it's forbidden to stick your bare ass out your car window or have a kegger on the chancellor's lawn or fart out loud in the library. Of course it's forbidden — morally, aesthetically, cosmically, ontologically. "Legally" is the least of it.
And what do the wackjobs do when they encounter such a sign? Do they disarm on the spot? Do they capitulate to their liberal overlords and leave the guns in the car, thereby exposing themselves and possibly their innocent families to the untold dangers of walking down a street in a quiet Midwestern town? Do they risk life and limb in this fashion because some left-wing pussies think guns are inappropriate in certain places? Don't those egghead pansies know that a wild-eyed minority crackhead can jump out of the bushes at any moment to deprive us of our property and ravage our womenfolk?
Or do they engage in civil disobedience — that beautiful legacy of peace-lovers Thoreau and Gandhi and King — and keep packing?
posted by kc @ 12:42 AM
24 comments
24 Comments:
Maybe they just leave their guns in the glovebox of their cars so that the not-yet-socalized young punks can break in and steal them and go on to bloodier mayhem.
And here’s a question for you, why is it that a country full of jingoists cannot scrape together enough self-respect to house their public institutions in decent buildings?
It's the money that they can't scrape together. How can you invest in something significant and beautiful and lasting when you're pumping a quarter of a trillion dollars a year into the war machine? (I guess the Athenians did it ... but they had slave labor)
Even so, you might have a point about the self-respect. We seem to put a lot of yahoos in public office who, as our dear friend Ignatius would say, have no sense of theology or geometry, let alone taste. Example: Some cretin running for my City Commission is saying that istead of building a beautiful (and badly needed) new public library (that would be a monument to civic pride and literacy), we should move the existing library out of downtown and into an abandoned Food4Less in a commercial district (lots of space, lots of parking, ugly as hell ... the perfect solution for people who don't read and/or understand the aesthetic experience of visiting a hall of learning).
Somebody wants to move the library to an empty Food4Less?! That breaks my heart. One of the most important functions of a public library, I think, is to act as a haven and resource for children, who will discover and learn there. If it sucks, which it will if it's in an abandoned Food4Less in a non-walking-around part of town, a lot of people, especially children, will suffer.
With the city park by the current location, they could build a wonderful public space that had the library, a plaza with some art and a structure for shading a farmer’s market. Does Lawrence even have a farmer’s market? The market here in Davis is in a park between downtown and campus. It is very successful and is a major hangout and socialize spot with live music.
On the other hand, maybe they could move your library to the Food4less and put in a shooting range.
Lawrence has a Farmers Market from spring to November. It has grown in recent years, and it's very popular. It's just east of the main drag, by the arts center.
That guy will never get elected. But, under the best election outcome, the town will still end up with less of a library than it deserves, and it will have a big no-guns sign on every door.
This town isn't a big pro-gun place, which means those awful signs will be everywhere.
It's unbelievable that a public place has to "opt out" of letting people carry lethal weapons like guns around.
Blame Missouri. They're gun-crazy.
A columnist in the Eagle was talking about those signs the other day, and apparently some businesses are adding their own little messages under the clip art. At Chipotle, for example, the sign says, "Happiness is a warm burrito, not a warm gun."
The second week of January the director of our preschool sent a slightly frantic message to the church office saying that she needed the sign in question on her entrance door. I guess we all need a reminder to enter unarmed into a room of four year olds.
After some dicussion (and one brief look at the signage options) my secretary and I decided NOT to post the sign on all our church doors. It just didn't seem to fit the "welcome to a house of worship" atmosphere. Plus we are already exempt by the law. It is illegal to bring your gun to church. (I would hate to get shot while in the pulpit) It's only places like Chipotle that have to take a stand (even via ugly sign) to prohibt weapons.
I suggest text rather than the awful graphic.
No, I suggest outlawing private firearms.
Until then my question is WWJP?
(what would Jesus pack?)
Welcome, AEL!
Yes, text, though itself regrettable, would be better than the graphic.
I am with you on private gun ownership. The small amount of good that could come from a heavily armed citizenry — stopping the occasional burglar? — could NEVER outweigh the massive and obvious harm.
Statistics bear out that a head of a household who buys a gun to protect his family is much more likely, if he uses the gun at all, to use it to kill (a) himself, (b) his wife, (c) his family, or (d) some combination of the above, than to ever use it to stop an intruder.
I actually started to think about what Jesus would pack before I realized that it was probably a rhetorical question, like most of those WWJD questions. The only one I'm sure about is that Jesus would drive a Honda.
Good call on not befouling the church with giant clip art. A church is another kind of building that ought to be attractive and awe-inspiring.
I just realized that the clip art is quite similar to the logo of the Coalition to Ban Handguns, of which I was once a member, now known as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. But even that one is better.
It is similar, except the coalition's sign is square, which today's simpletons might not understand, and the gun looks less modern.
Do you think any pinheads read the sign to mean simply no handguns and show up with an assault rifle?
(I love that you were an anti-gun nut, E)
Statistics bear out that a head of a household who buys a gun to protect his family is much more likely, if he uses the gun at all, to use it to kill (a) himself, (b) his wife, (c) his family, or (d) some combination of the above, than to ever use it to stop an intruder.
The statistics that I have seen say the opposite. Now I guess I'll have to look it up again to see which is accurate.
According to the CDC and Harvard, every year, more than 30,000 people are shot to death in murders, suicides and accidents. More than half of those are suicides. I consider Harvard and the CDC pretty good sources. The gun lobby, for obvious reasons, always disputes gun-death stats by calling the studies and numbers shoddy.
Aside from that, anecdotally, how often do you hear about someone successfully defending his family against an intuder, compared with how often you hear about someone killing himself or someone in his family or someone in the family getting access to the gun and killing someone else?
I don't have the time to look up the statistics before my meeting in three minutes, although I'm quite confident that they would show that a substantial number of people who got guns to protect themselves are killed by an intruder after said intruder takes their gun from them.
Many people who get guns for their own protection aren't actually willing to use it to kill the crazy bastard who broke in.
Sharon, here's an example from my town. Erin knows the intruder.
Once inside, (Damien) Lewis allegedly said he searched the house for valuables he could stuff in his pants, shirt or socks because he didn’t have a car. In the master bedroom, Lewis found a .22-caliber pistol and several rounds of ammunition...
Realizing they’d returned home, he confronted them with the gun he’d found in the bedroom...
Assuming Wallace and Chandlee were dead, Lewis ransacked the home...
He told police he left with two guns -- he’d found a second pistol in the safe -- stuffed in his socks and a brown Douglas County Bank bag stuffed in his pants.
Asked by police if the couple had resisted, Lewis allegedly replied, “No, I just popped them.”
Oh, I should explain. Erin went to grade school with the intruder. He's not like a current friend.
Knowing a killer probably trumps Mary, who went to school with a guy who is now one of the top two or three people in the KKK. Like you said, they're not like current friends or anything.
Thanks for the disclaimer, kc.
A guy with whom I was pretty well-acquainted in high school was killed nearly two years ago, and a jury last week let his murderer walk free, but then, lots of people probably know crime victims; knowing the actual killers, on the other hand ...
They let him walk?!
Erin, do you care if I share your Damien story from the J-W?
You know I only believe statistics from conservative lobbyists.
Ever since I served on a jury that acquitted a guy on child molestation charges I have tried to give jurors a break. They know things that casual observers don't, and I try to believe that they know the case better than I do. But this crew really missed the boat. They simply didn't like it that the star witness had a criminal record and that all of the other evidence was circumstantial. But there was TONS of it. And having a criminal record doesn't mean that you will always lie.
Go for it, kc. No one should miss my J-W debut.
Then share some choice quotes about Damien from my sixth-grade diary.
OK, here's the story that appeared in my local paper. It doesn't mention that Erin had a big crush on Damien in grade school.
It's been 11 years since Erin McDaniel, then a fifth-grader in Newton, reported a classmate for allegedly planning to shoot another student and bringing a gun to school.
Last week McDaniel, a copy editor at the (J-W), was stunned when she realized her former classmate — Damien C. Lewis — was charged with capital murder for the slayings of an elderly Lawrence couple.
"That name struck a chord with me, but I thought surely that's not him," said McDaniel, 22, Lawrence.
Lewis was arrested last week and charged with shooting to death Pete Wallace and Wyona Chandlee, both 71. Police said the couple interrupted a burglary in their 1530 Learnard Ave. home.
Lewis was in Lawrence, wanted since late April for a parole violation. He had been released from the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, where he was serving time for aggravated assault, burglary and criminal possession of a firearm
In April 1991, McDaniel and Lewis sat near each other in fifth grade at Newton's Chisholm Middle School.
"We talked often," said McDaniel, a May journalism graduate at Kansas University. "We were friendly."
Watch led to dispute
Lewis got into a dispute with another student about a watch, claiming the other student stole it from him, McDaniel said. Lewis said he was going to bring a gun to school and shoot the student.
"It wasn't something I took seriously," McDaniel said, noting that the incident was several years before the now well-known school shooting incidents, such as Columbine High School in Colorado. "The next day he opened his desk and showed me he had a gun."
Lewis allegedly said he planned to ambush the student in the restroom after recess, McDaniel said. Lewis had noticed the student always went to the restroom after recess before returning to class.
After recess, Lewis walked by McDaniel and patted his shirt, as if to tell her he had the gun, and then walked into the restroom, she said.
McDaniel decided she had to do something. The student Lewis was after was at the water fountain, so she sent one of her girlfriends over to warn him not to go into the restroom.
"He looked at us as if we were crazy," McDaniel said.
McDaniel then told her teacher about Lewis and the gun. The male teacher went directly to the bathroom and came out with Lewis. The teacher had the gun.
Attempts to contact the teacher and principal who were at Chisholm at the time were unsuccessful. The student Lewis allegedly intended to shoot could not be located.
McDaniel doesn't know what, if any action was taken against Lewis. She said she spent the rest of the afternoon that day talking with the school counselor about the incident. Lewis was transferred to another school.
The counselor, Curtis Stubbs, declined to comment on Lewis, citing student confidentiality.
Stacie McClelland, Lewis' 21-year-old girlfriend here in Lawrence, said Lewis had told her about his childhood episode with the gun.
"He told me when he was 12 or 13 he did take a gun to school and he did get busted with it. He said he did it because somebody called him the "N" word. It had a lot to do with racism."
No retaliation
The truth about the incident didn't come out in the Newton paper until the mother of the targeted student wrote a letter to the editor, McDaniel said.
McDaniel said she was sure Lewis knew she turned him in. She thinks she was the only one Lewis told about his plans. But McDaniel said she didn't fear retaliation by Lewis.
"I wasn't really afraid of him," she said. "I didn't think much about it."
McDaniel and Lewis would later see each other around Newton, but they never talked. She doesn't remember the last time she saw him.
But the memories of that school day in April 1991 came flooding back last week when McDaniel learned Lewis might face the death penalty if he's convicted in the double slaying.
"I'm just very sad about it," she said. "It makes me wonder what kind of horrible things were going on with him when he was 10 or 11."
Violent fight
Until three years ago, Gordon Stineman was principal a Santa Fe Middle School in Newton. He, too, remembers Lewis.
"He was a good student, but he was a volatile student," Stineman said during a telephone interview from his home in Newton.
"In fact, he was in the most violent fight I ever had to break up. When it was over, Damien had torn his shirt off; he was bare-chested, he was really going to get that other kid."
At the time, Lewis was in eighth grade.
Stineman, who retired in 1999, was visiting his daughter last week in Ottawa when Lewis' picture was on the front page of the J-W after the arrest.
"I saw that picture and I said to myself, 'Oh, no, is that the Damien Lewis I know?' And then I thought about it, and I said, 'Well, I'm not surprised.' He was a good kid, but, oh, he had a short fuse."
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