Guns Again

Yesterday, as I do periodically, I tuned into a right-wing radio station here in Colorado Springs. We have several, plus a liberal talk station from Denver that is hard to receive, as we're about sixty miles from their transmitter.

Colorado conservative Mike Rosen was on, pontificating about the proposed gun control legislation under consideration by the state legislature here. The bill under discussion would require a background check before any transfer of a firearm, even a lender. Rosen was beside himself. "You have to have a background check just to lend your gun to someone else to go hunting, or face a possible prison sentence!" He was in high dudgeon.

It struck me that the way to avoid breaking such a law would be to refuse any requests to borrow a gun. Even if a gun owner did lend a gun, how would the authorities know it unless the borrower committed an illegal act, for example hunting out of season or exceeding bag limits. In that case, it does seem to me that the person who lent the gun does deserve some form of penalty.

Frankly, it's very unlikely that any judge would want to clog up the prison system with someone who merely lent a gun to a fellow citizen. I think the law is intended to curb straw purchases of guns or "loans" which are apt to be permanent.

Not being an attorney, I'll not explore the legal nuances of implied responsibilities here. Suffice to say, any gun owner does bear a moral  responsibility to protect the weapon and keep it away from anyone who  might be dangerous either to himself or the community.

If a gun owner keeps his gun in a locker at home and locks his house when he's away, and someone breaks in, and defeats the locker, and steals the gun to commit crimes, the owner bears little or no moral responsibility for what has happened. On the other hand, if that same gun owner leaves his weapon lying around the house and leaves the house unlocked, and a neighbor child wanders in and takes the gun, there is some moral culpability, even though the child was not invited in, and even though the child's parents are ultimately to blame for not attending to the child. Then suppose the gun owner's own child invited the neighbor kid into the house, and a tragedy followed. Certainly then the gun owner must be held to blame.

If, as happened here in Colorado in 1999, an adult buys guns and ammunition for juveniles, and the juveniles then shoot up a high school and kill a dozen people, that adult (she was eighteen at the time) should be held accountable by law. That's really what the bill under consideration here would provide, in my opinion, and Mr. Rosen should get off his high horse about it.

Science and Faith

The following story is reprinted from a Facebook posting. I have a personal story after it.

It’s happening in Oklahoma – again.
A bill that would prevent teachers from marking down students who turn in papers that dispute ideas like climate change and evolution was approved by the Oklahoma Common Education committee on Tuesday by a 9-8 vote.
HB1674 states that students in science classes would be able to make totally unscientific and unfounded faith-based claims, and not be penalized for it. This is a horrible travesty of education, one that I’m sure most teachers would protest vigorously.
From Mother Jones:

Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. “I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks,” says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. “A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.”

Really? So I can declare that God created the world around six thousand years ago, even though my textbook says something quite different, and get an ‘A’ in science class? Whatever happened to the inquiry method, in which students are required to develop a solid argument based on proven facts?
Of course, this is Oklahoma, the same state that has brought us Senator James Inhofe who famously stated, “Climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that mandated religious instruction in science classes, lawmakers in many states are still trying to water down the teaching of science and push creationism into the public schools.
It’s not just Oklahoma. Just a few weeks into the 2013 legislative session, there are already anti-evolution bills circulating in Missouri, Montana, Colorado, Indiana, in addition to Oklahoma. And in some cases, like this one, climate change has taken a prominent place, along with evolution, as a target for creationists.
These lawmakers have also changed their tactics. Take the bill proposed by Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin: HB291 would require that intelligent design and “destiny” get the same amount of textbook coverage in Missouri schools as the theory of evolution. Brattin insists that his bill is not influenced by religion. After all, the legislator has declared: “I’m a huge science buff.”
Again from Mother Jones:

Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, says Oklahoma has proposed more anti-evolution legislation than any other state, introducing eight bills with academic freedom language since 2004. (None has passed.) “The problem with these bills is that they’re so open-ended; it’s a kind of code for people who are opposed to teaching climate change and evolution,” Meikle says.

“An extremely high percentage of scientists will tell you that evolution doesn’t have scientific weaknesses,” says the NCSE’s Meikle.

As Bill Nye the Science Guy puts it, denial of evolution is unique to the United States. The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades — and yet, defying Darwin, creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Let’s hope this egregious bill never passes.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/need-that-a-grade-try-denying-climate-and-evolution.html#ixzz2LrIFm2iU

Back in 1999 when I was working on a Masters Degree in education, I also  worked as a substitute teacher, and one day I covered in a middle school  earth science class. The teacher had left a lesson plan that called for the students to cut out maps of  the continents and paste them together as Pangaea existed millions of years ago.

The kids got to work with more or less good graces, except for one little boy who insisted that there is no such thing as continental drift and the earth has always looked just as it does today. I told him to go ahead and paste the continents as he thought they had always been and to write his  justification for the teacher. He did.

When I checked his paper, I saw that he had written a diatribe. Only an IDIOT (his capitalization) would believe such a thing, he wrote. God created the world as it is now.

I'm sure he was parroting what he had been  told by his parents, minister and others. I guess the theological premise is that the world is only as old as the number of generations mentioned in the Bible. Also, change such as continental drift or evolution or climate change suggests an earlier imperfection, and what kind of God would make an imperfect world?

I still wonder how I would handle a situation  like that if I was that boy's teacher. It hardly seems fair to penalize a twelve year old for believing what he has heard from the adults he trusts most. On the other hand, his argument is just bad, contrary to what verified scientific fact says is a great fact.

(And I thought teaching history was controversial!)

Remember Kent State!

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  The Kent State Truth Tribunal (KSTT) was founded in 2010 upon the emergence of new forensic evidence regarding the May 4, 1970 Kent State Massacre. KSTT is a non-profit organization focused on revealing truth and bringing justice to Kent State massacre victims and survivors.

  
  

  On May 4, l970 members of the Ohio National Guard fired between 61 and 67 shots into a crowd of unarmed anti-war protestors at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, killing four and wounding nine students. For over 40 years, the government has claimed that the Guardsmen did not fire on command, and instead shot in self-defense after hearing sniper fire in the crowd.
  
  In 2010, new forensic evidence emerged debunking this theory. The evidence consisted of a tape recorded by a Kent State student during the shooting. Though the original tape, known as the Kent State Strubbe tape, was destroyed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) in 1979, a bonafide copy of the tape was located in 2007 and was analyzed in 2010 by an internationally accredited forensic expert. The analysis, derived using state-of-the-art technology that was not available in prior investigations of the shooting, demonstrates that there was a ‘command to fire' at the protestors. Moreover, the enhanced tape identified four pistol shots fired 70 seconds before the command as coming from an F.B.I. informant’s pistol to create the 'sound of sniper fire.' Although the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) received this new evidence, the Department declined to re-open its investigation of the Kent State shooting.
  
  The victims of the Kent State massacre and their families have been unable to obtain access to meaningful redress. In 1974, federal charges against eight members of the Ohio National Guard of willfully violating the rights of the dead and wounded students were dismissed because, according to the judge, the government had failed to prove its case. In 1979 a civil rights settlement was reached with the issuance of a signed Statement of Regret and $15,000 for Allison B. Krause, one of the victims of the Kent State shooting. However, the settlement did not include an apology. Moreover, the federal charges and settlement were centered on civil rights and constitutional violations - there has yet to be a criminal indictment for murder. Additionally, as investigations of the shooting have thus far only been conducted by government entities, there has yet to be a credible, impartial, and independent investigation of the Kent State shooting. Moreover, the U.S. military has failed to address the use of live ammunition on college campuses and whether appropriate force was used on protestors at Kent State.
  
  Failure to ensure justice and accountability for the Kent State massacre has set a precedent that the U.S. can continue to harass, abuse, and even kill protestors. Just ten days after the Kent State massacre, two student protesters were murdered by state police as they protested the Vietnam War on the Jackson State University campus. American authorities have stated ‘snipers’ prompted the firing of military weapons at student protesters, just as at Kent State University. Unfortunately suppression of peaceful assembly continues today. Since the ‘Occupy’ movement began in 2011, protestors have been labeled as ‘domestic terrorists’ by the F.B.I. and have been arrested in massive numbers for peaceful protests and assemblies. Until the U.S. conducts a credible, impartial and investigation into the Kent State shooting, and provides redress for victims and their families, protestors in the U.S. will continue to be at risk of being deprived of their fundamental rights without accountability.
  

Sunday Morning Thoughts

I like President Obama. I haven't felt the same affection for a president since John Kennedy was murdered. Moreover, I think he has done a very good job in the White House, especially since he has to deal with such a strident opposition. I respect his judgement as a professional politician concerning how much legislation he can get through Congress and his reluctance to push too hard. He has tried to be reasonable with unreasonable people.

I am glad he has ended the Iraq imbroglio, though some troops remain, and is preparing to end the American commitment of soldiers to Afghanistan, albeit with some residual presence there.

He has implemented a very tough policy against al-Qaida, including the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, without any prior notice to their government. In truth, the Pakistani government has given lip service to helping with anti-terrorist work, but done nearly nothing except take a lot of American aid.

The drone aircraft strikes trouble me a lot. I think it's more than time to reconsider whether the enmity that they provoke outweighs any successes they achieve.

Worse, I am profoundly disappointed that the president uses drones to kill Americans abroad who are suspected of working with al-Qaida. Any American, no matter how odious, deserves due process of law, unless the threat is imminent and there is no other way to prevent an overt act of murder. Allowing a president - any president, since this will serve as a precedent for Obama's successors - to kill anyone he thinks is a threat makes our democracy much weaker, not stronger. Again, though I trust this president, it's vital that we remember he will be leaving office on January 20, 2017, and who knows who his successor will be.

Now, since I'm sitting in my living room typing this instead of going to Mass as a good Catholic should, I think I'll say a few words about the church and my own religious convictions. I'm a lapsed Catholic. It's seven years now since I attended Mass.

Part of the reason is that it's just very pleasant to stay home, drink coffee and read the Sunday paper. Part of it too, is the sex scandal that has enveloped the priesthood in the last twenty years.

Pedophile priests are terribly disturbing. As shocking as the revelations of child abuse were, almost as bad was the news that the church could afford to make large cash settlements on the victims, an amount of money now known to top $100 million. Every parish I ever was part of seemed to be on the edge of solvency and priests periodically cajoled parishioners to make larger donations. And all that time they had enormous investments squirreled away!

Finally, and egregiously, it is now known that church administrators - that is, bishops - orchestrated cover-ups of the sex abuses, transferring pedophiliac priests, and tried to squelch any reports of their crimes. I'll leave it to prosecutors to decide if there were obstructions of justice, but regardless, it was a great moral failing.

It also greatly bothers me that several prelates of the church sent letters to Catholics, telling them in effect that voting for a political candidate who wants to keep abortion legal is a sin. I admire and proclaim the church's positions against war and in favor of worker dignity, but I cannot agree with a religious leader telling the faithful they sin by voting against a church position.

The messenger may be flawed, but that doesn't invalidate the message. Priests who preyed on children needn't mean that the gospels are any less true or good. So to say it briefly, I think there is some sort of God, a prime cause of all the matter in the universe, but that spirit does not involve itself in human life at all. I believe there was a Jesus, a wandering preacher who proclaimed a coming kingdom after history ended, and urged that we forgive and love each other. I cannot make myself believe he did miracles or was any more divine than you, dear reader, or I.

That's it for Sunday morning. Today's LA Times crossword was very inventive.