The Walkerville Weekly Reader

The Campaign to Protect Gun Violence’s abstention campaign also warns rape victims about the consequences of using firearms in self-defense.

Imagine dropping your son off for college and learning his roommate—some veteran you’ve never met before—has a gun in his desk. And it’s perfectly legal!

This was the unthinkable state of affairs during the heyday of the G.I. Bill—and you don’t have to know the unbloodied history of colleges in the fifties to know it was absurd.

Do we really want to return to those horrible days when students would bring their rifles to school and go hunting immediately afterward? When teachers, often veterans, were legally allowed to carry concealed handguns? Sure, it might have protected students from crime, but what kind of message did it send to them that guns can prevent crimes?

Prevention is not the answer. You wouldn’t ask men to wear condoms to prevent pregnancy. Abstinence is the only cure both for pregnancy and for firearms.

When it comes to keeping colleges safe for the poor, misguided, violent minority, a small group of self-defense extremists keeps telling us that we just need more defenders.

It doesn’t work. Why, when you define a mass shooting as any shooting where four or more people were killed, the number of shootings stopped by “good guy” civilians with a gun is zero.

More defenders is not the answer. Not when those defenders use firearms. Like millions of Americans, I was heartbroken when I learned about the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. Why could it not have happened in Texas, or in Oregon, or some other D-rated state? Why an A-rated state like Connecticut?

American embassy workers deserved pantsing from Al Qaeda, says Media Matters fellow Oliver Willis.

Media Matters for America fellow Oliver Willis said yesterday that the investigation into the deaths of four American embassy personnel in Benghazi is entirely inappropriate. Willis wrote that the questioners “never got over being pantsed on the playground by some liberal.”

According to Willis, asking why a Democratic President would refuse to assist an American ambassador under attack and the former Navy SEALs protecting him is like asking “Why is there air?”

“It’s like asking, why do Democrats love cop-killers?” said Willis. “They just do.”

The President initially claimed that the deaths were caused by a terrorist movie director. The Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is questioning those claims.

Extremist religious ‘refuseniks’ must acknowledge the errors in their belief systems before they are allowed freedom.

Religious freedom is fundamental to American life. The principal that each and every person in our country has the right to his or her own beliefs is enshrined in our constitution. Our country was founded on the principle that the separation of church and state must never be violated.

I am outraged that powerful forces in our society are working to redefine religious freedom as the freedom to impose their own beliefs on the rest of us when we visit their churches, businesses, and homes. This is a complete distortion of one of America’s founding principles. National legislation is required to combat this perversion of American values.

Religious freedom must never be used as an excuse to discriminate against behaviors in church halls that the churchman opposes, or behaviors in businesses that the businessman doesn’t support, or behaviors in homes that makes the homeowner uncomfortable.