Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Suite 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
Email: editor@dailyemercdd.com
Online Edition:
www.dailyemerald.com
Wednesday, October 23,2002
-Oregon Daily Emerald
Commentary
Editor in Chief:
Michael J. Kleckner
Managing Editor
Jessica Richelderfer
Editorial Editors:
Salena De La Cruz, Pat Payne
Letters to the editor
God celebrates
all relationships
Thank you for an eminently sen
sible editorial supporting a domes
tic partner registry for same-gender
couples. Why two people of any sex
who declare their love and commit
ment to each other should be
called an “affront to God” shows
the narrow limits that some con
servative people attribute to their
God. My God is big enough to cele
brate my lesbian daughter and my
gay son in their relationships just
as God cares for my two straight
children in theirs.
A same-gender relationship in no
way diminishes traditional hetero
sexual families; a law that fosters
stability and equal justice for all
can only be right.
Regarding the bathrooms for
transgender people, I just re
turned from two months in
France and found that in several
situations, bathrooms were “uni
sex.” Sometimes I didn’t even
know this, and it was a bit discon
certing for this 65-year-old
woman to exit a stall and find a
man standing at a urinal, but it
made a lot of sense. Nobody
seemed to see it as a problem; in
fact, if I had a young boy with me,
I might prefer to be with him in
the bathroom.
We Americans are just too
damn hung up on sex to look at
things rationally sometimes.
Here’s hoping that the good peo
ple of Eugene will move several
steps ahead of those in Houston.
Sue Null
Houston
U.S. gives unfair
treatment to Canadians
Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer,
was returning to Canada when he
was arrested at a layover in New York
on Sept. 26 and deported Oct. 11 by
the United States to Syria. He avoid
ed military service in Syria by leav
ing when he was a child with his
family to Canada. Now he is missing
5riu>oK., another.
LAt T!^^6*
SSUra*!
rHET DO NT/'
THB-'f K^f W
*J£t> Mf ws
^ vrar*,
Steve Baggs Emerald
in Syria, probably in prison, perhaps
being tortured to teach him a lesson.
This is against all international
law. If deported, he should have
been sent to Canada, or to the
country he was last in, Switzerland.
Does the United States remember
that Canadian officials hid U.S. em
bassy officials in Iran after the U.S.
Embassy was stormed? Does the
United States know the job Canadi
ans have been doing in Afghanistan
to fight al-Qaida for the last year?
Why is the United States treating
Canadians so badly and so illegally?
The United States should find
Arar in Syria and return him to
his family.
Tom Trottier
Ottawa, Canada
Capitalism is priceless
Buy a book at the University of
Oregon Bookstore: pay $120. Sell
book back for $7. Receive less
than 10 percent of your invest
ment, but be grateful for 10 per
cent savings to begin with. Watch
as the bookstore marks book back
up by more than 65 percent!
Experiencing consumerism
through book-selling monopoly at
exorbitant prices: loss of #113.
Understanding financial raping
thinly veiled as capitalism:
priceless?
Celeste Burns
junior
sociology
Second Amendment should ‘keep up with the times ’
Guest commentary
MINNEAPOLIS (U-WIRE) — The sniper
attacks this month near the nation’s capital
might or might not be the acts of terrorists,
but they are certainly terrifying. No matter
what the motives behind the attacks might
be, the shooter has exercised the power to
determine who lives and who dies, and this
power has left the residents of the region
and the nation feeling helpless, defenseless
and panicked.
Because the assassin is using a firearm,
these shootings cannot help but inflame dis
cussion and debate over the laws and policies
that govern the use of these deadly weapons.
Just as Sept. 11, 2001, naturally led to a dis
cussion of the laws and policies that govern
both access to the airways and access to this
country, the re-emergence of this debate is
only natural. How could we not address how
the sniper has the gun and how to prevent
similar events in the future?
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Con
stitution guarantees citizens of this country
the right to keep and bear arms. However,
there is debate in the courts and in commen
taries as to whether this amendment actually
was meant to be applied to individuals or to
the states to form militias.
In either case, the framers had two main
concerns when passing the Second Amend
ment: First, the nation must be able to defend
itself against other nations, and second, the
citizens of the nation must have a defense
against a tyrannical government that has a
standing army of professional soldiers.
We have two choices: honor the words of
the Constitution and the intent of the
framers, in spite of the fact that the situation
our nation faces today bears almost no re
semblance to the circumstances that led to
the passing of the Second Amendment; or, we
can take a pragmatic approach to both the
words and intent of the framers and construct
gun legislation that balances the new role
guns hold with the ability to provide in
creased security.
How can we honor the words and the in
tent of the Constitution? Simple: no limits
on who can own weapons and no limit on
what weapons they can own. The right to
bear arms is not offered with exceptions, so
why would it mean that we can own some
arms and not others? Yet there are laws that
prevent the average citizen from owning ful
ly automatic machine guns and rocket
launchers. And what about biological and
chemical weapons?
Shouldn’t the Second Amendment expand
to keep up with the times? The framers didn’t
envision armor-piercing bullets, but it’s been
argued that the Second Amendment should
protect our right to own them.
Here is where this argument dissolves
into absurdity. If we want to honor the
words and the intent of the Constitution,
scenarios such as the ones above are the
only way to be consistent. Remember, the
Second Amendment was passed in order to
allow ordinary citizens to defend the coun
try in case of invasion.
This made sense at the time because the
citizens didn’t want a standing army of pro
fessional soldiers, and the weaponry of citi
zens and soldiers was exactly the same. Inci
dents such as Waco and Ruby Ridge should
prove that there is little to be gained today by
ordinary citizens taking up arms against the
government because the technology of
weaponry and the size of the U.S. Army have
made this impossible.
The Second Amendment as envisioned by
the framers is no longer relevant or practi
cal. So this leaves us with just one
option — a pragmatic approach to gun own
ership and gun laws. Does this mean the end
of the family hunting trip or the loss of the
ability to defend your home against bur
glars? No. But it might mean registration
of guns and identification procedures that
allow police to trace bullets.
We have surrendered some of our person
al liberties in order to allow our government
to defend us from terror. President
George W. Bush’s USA Patriot Act is a prime
example of a request by the government
that we sacrifice some of the freedoms we
enjoy to ensure we can recover some of the
security lost by Americans to terrorists.
Incidents such as the recent Washington
area sniper shootings also require that
we make some sacrifices to ensure our
security.
If the only hesitation is some misguided
loyalty to the Second Amendment, then we
need to re-evaluate what the framers were
trying to protect and what we as Americans
need to protect today.
Matt Telleen writes for the Minnesota Daily
(U. Minnesota).