Vigil held to promote gun control

The current tragedy, at the Boston Marathon, makes one wonder why we think all this talk about gun control really means anything. This tragic incident dramatizes to us that the government, at any level, or laws of any kind, can not protect us in any situation if some crazed person(s) wants to commit a horrific act using any means. Don't we already have laws against killing and bodily injury to others including guns, bombs, etc.? All such laws just reduce our freedoms. They only lead to punishment of the perpetrator, if they are caught, but they do not stop the explicit act!

The only actions we can reasonably take are personal defense. An analogy is driving, the best we can do to prevent an auto accident is to drive defensively. Even with that we can not fully protect ourselves against a careless driver.

That said, I like my chances when I am acting defensively regardless of the threats surrounding me.

What we can expect here is the police and the Feds will respond and make a big show, investigations will follow, but basically nothing they did or do will have protected the innocent people killed and hurt as a result of this tragedy.

Cynically I say the next thing that will be happening will be our President will go on TV and expound on the tragedy, offer empathy, and I predict over time he will use it to promote another law costing us our freedom in some way, all under the auspices of making us safer.. And as this incident shows that new law will prevent nothing, will not make us safer, but it will cause a further erosion of our freedoms.

As John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Meaning if this countries citizens & elected people are not of a sound moral character, and behave accordingly, no law will protect us.

Our Constitution does not guarantee our safety! Our Constitution guarantees our freedom! Beware of those who come calling for a "loss of our freedoms in order to protect/make us safer"!

May God help those who suffered and died in this tragedy and their families.

April 15, 2013 at 3:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Vigil held to promote gun control

According to the Weimar Republic 1928 Law on Firearms & Ammunition, firearms acquisition or carrying permits were "only to be granted to persons of undoubted reliability, and—in the case of a firearms carry permit—only if a demonstration of need is set forth." The Nazi Weapons Law of March 18, 1938 was very similar in structure and wording, but relaxed gun control requirements for the general population. However, it prohibited manufacturing of firearms and ammunition by Jews. Shortly thereafter, in the additional Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons of November 11, 1938, Jews were forbidden from possession of any weapons at all. On November 9. 1938 , the New York Times reported that "The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks, the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been 'disarmed' with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition."
Holocaust survivor Theodore Haas, when asked "Some concentration camp survivors are opposed to gun ownership. What message would you like to share with them?," replied: "I would like to say, 'You cowards; you gun haters, you don't deserve to live in America. Go live in the Soviet Union, if you love gun control so damn much.' It was the stupidity of these naive fools that aided and abetted Hitler’s goons and thugs. Anti-gun ownership Holocaust survivors insult the memories of all those that needlessly perished for lack of being able to adequately defend themselves."

April 15, 2013 at 1:13 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Vigil held to promote gun control

Well voevoda I fundamentally disagree with your argument regarding :" ...they are defending their own most personal "home"--their body--from an unwelcome and possibly dangerous intruder". This implies that there have been over 53million rapes since Roe V Wade, possibly many multiples of those considering there are only certain times of the month a women can get pregnant.

You can decide how all these pregnancies happened but one thought is that abortion is used as contraception. If abortion is occurring because of promiscuity this is not a good motive for abortion.

My point really is about the contradiction between the demand for "gun control" & the "silence on the aborting of innocents".

How can one demand gun control and not abortion control?

April 15, 2013 at 10:38 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Vigil held to promote gun control

I find the gun control debate very confusing morally. On the one hand we have the tragic killings in Connecticut which inspired the current clamor to restrict access to guns or just gun control in general. Proponents say: it is only back ground checks who should argue with that?

Yet we have the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell from Philadelphia where police found what a grand jury report called a “baby charnel house” where illegal and late term abortions were performed under dangerous conditions. There is no public outcry against this situation. Since Roe V Wade approximately 53 million children have been aborted, some under the conditions mentioned above, yet no out cry.

There is no public outcry to restrict the scalpels, or other devices, or medications that cause these deaths and dangerous conditions for women. Not to mention the innocent lives that are taken some of which occur after birth.

Guns are legal and even encoded in our constitution; scalpels, & medications are also legal...Where is the balance?

If a bomb is set off that killed 53 million people all at once we would be going to war. Yet because we abort our children in clinics and charnel houses a few at a time we ignore this atrocity. We justify it because the Supreme Court said the citizens of the USA have a "Right to Privacy". Did the Supreme Court say we had a right to abort 1/6th the population of the USA?

So before anyone goes and expounds poetically about gun registration or any other method of gun access/control, ask ourselves "Where are our priorities really"? Can we really justify gun control without controlling the means, methods, conditions & reasons that facilitate abortions?

I do not support the needless taking of life under any circumstances, but given our current debate, are guns worse than abortions? Where is the moral balance in this complex situation?

April 14, 2013 at 1:27 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Democrats criticize Brownback over comments made in national radio address

I get really tired of all of the criticism flying both ways. Nothing, but nothing is accomplished if all one does is criticize the person they disagree with. All this accomplishes is making the interaction "personal" in a negative sense. The politics of "personal destruction" is not going to win the day in the long term.

The Democrats in Kansas are in a similar situation as the Republicans in Washington.

It is time both sides put their nose to the grind stone and accomplish something for the citizens of Kansas &, in the case of Washington, the citizens of the USA.

In the case of Kansas I have never heard the leadership compliment anyone except members of their own parties.

There is a truism when one is trying to enlist someone else's cooperation: "A person needs to believe that someone will work with them before they will listen to that someone". It is time for the political leadership on both sides to heed that advice.

It might be helpful if those commenting to do the same.

April 9, 2013 at 9:50 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

City approves retail zoning for site across the highway from Rock Chalk Park

Downtown is its own worst enemy. The Downtown Lawrence organization does not even include all of the businesses within the downtown boundaries.

There is no plan for downtown to sustain itself thus all we get are bars.

There is no organized plan to develop downtown in a way it will attract shoppers. Thus what you get is an entertainment district, not a shopping district. It is a place for college students and the few who occasionally want a change of venue for dinner.

The no growthers/control growthers have strangled downtown resulting in high rents.

Get a real plan to draw people downtown for everyday shopping versus the occasional trip...or maybe none at all. Downtown needs a major drawing card.

March 27, 2013 at 7:05 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Be the best

Glad to hear you support the Rock Chalk Park. Hope you also supported giving the developer tax breaks equivalent to approximately 1/2 the cost of the project and we only get 5-10 employees. That is government math. Let's see, that is $1.7million per employee of long term employment. Do you make that much money right_down_the_middle?

March 8, 2013 at 1:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Buyer’s choice

Ernie, interesting but I think a battle that will be lost over time. The generation coming up is totally media/online based. Their buying habits are already engrained. The problem is not just books, etc. it is everything that can be purchased. Each year the online shopping dollar volume expands, look at christmas shopping.

You are dealing with busy families & new life styles. Time is a commodity most families are trying to manage. Just trying to get the whole family together for dinner one night a week can be a challenge.

Lawrence has a particularly unique problem with the limited hours of operation downtown in addition to the limited nature of national brand stores. People moving to town are used to shopping at the national brand stores.

Lawrence, Douglas County & the State of Kansas need to figure out how to capitalize on this expanding way of shopping. And they need to do it in a hurry.

My years in retail prove that people are creatures of habit. Once they are locked into shopping at a particular store or entertaining themselves at certain locations or eating at their "favorite restaurant" it is very, very hard to get the customer to change.

It is up to the communities and individual businesses to find ways to change habits and get them to shop at their businesses. Getting people to shop local vs online will take a change in our culture.

February 28, 2013 at 3:14 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: Different villages

Why is it when Lawrence discusses seniors it is only about those that are house bound or in need of help. To me this wrongfully distorts the view of who seniors are, what they do, what they want out of life & the many ways they continue to contribute to society. Certainly there is a need to help those needing it. But no more so than any other person needing help.

Lawrence does not seem to have an appreciation for the "Active 55+" senior citizen.

If Lawrence really wants to attract seniors to Lawrence, they need to understand this latter demographic and provide what they are looking for. They go south not just for the weather. They go there for the life style which Lawrence never mentions.

February 24, 2013 at 11:05 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Letter: City costs

This is just another example of a city that thinks it can do anything it wants & tell us how we need to do things. This commission is shoving their recycling agenda on the citizens not allowing us to recycle based on what & the way we think is best. They say they support local businesses but here they drive them out of business.

This commission needs to be voted out. Just make sure you vote only for candidates that respect we citizens, and who are not willing to waste our tax dollars on questionable projects.

February 19, 2013 at 11:03 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )