by Clayton Cramer
(PJ Media) – The Colorado lower house passed four gun-control bills recently, all of which were bad ideas, but at least some of these bills had something to do with a real problem: mass murder. Democrats are, of course, pursuing the wrong strategy, but there is at least some connection between recent mass murders and high-capacity magazines; it isn’t like they passed a law against staplers.
But why did they pass a bill to ban concealed-carry licensees from carrying on university campuses? What problem were they trying to solve?
I have been following the struggle over concealed carry on campus for a number of years, at least in part because I teach at a community college and I have taught at a state university in the past. While I generally feel safe on campus, I recognize something that many students figured out after the Virginia Tech slaughter. By declaring themselves “gun-free zones,” universities and colleges have essentially put up an invitation: “Madmen intent on going out in a blaze of infamy: come here to commit your crime. We guarantee that no one here will be able to legally shoot back.”
This is the one category of college crime that does worry me a bit: the insane person who decides to become famous by shooting up a place where we are sheep to be led to the slaughter. This is a low-probability, high-consequence event: I used to compare it to an asteroid collision, people no longer laugh when I say that.
The case for banning concealed carry on Colorado college campuses, according to one of the Democrats in the Colorado lower house, is essentially that women terrified of rape will just start shooting people at random out of fear. This does not seem to be a problem in Colorado as a whole; perhaps there is something about university students that makes them less intelligent than the average Colorado female? More likely, Rep. Salazar is a sexist fool.
This may seem off topic and maybe even petty at first glance.
However, I think it drives home the crux of the point of what’s going on in our country these days.
The House if Representatives is often called the “lower” house. That leaves the senate as the upper house. Now, first, they are really supposed to be coequal but let’s set that point aside. ALL just governance is at the consent of the governed. Where is the consent if not in the people’s house? How can the people’s house be “lower”? It is indeed highest. Or so the declaration goes. Meaningless point? A distinction without a difference?
Or might it be that this point is just one of many intended to lessen the authority of the people by combining the at every turn, right down to every term, that government is superior to the people?
Does it matter? I think it does. People are atop government and people’s liberty comes before government authority. I submit that part of what’s wrong is government considering itself above people and some people considering government above people.
Maybe one of the reasons legislatures pull this foolishness is because the reality of people consenting has been so undermined – even when it comes to our house being called lower?
What do you folks think about this?
It is tradition and (somewhat) arrogance that keeps the “upper house/lower house” designation, I read somewhere that when the national government was stationed in Philadelphia, the building the congress was in had the senate on the upper floor and the house of reps. on the lower floor (easier access for citizens? maybe?), thus the designation, plus, the senators were elected/selected by the individual states’ legislators to represent the individual states, wheather that has anything to do with it, I don’t know. I think that arrogance on the part of most senators is mostly what keeps it going, after all, look at the arrogance of dingy Harry reid and littleDick Durdbin, …says it all!
DLM.
They’re not co-equal, son.
THe House is LESSER important than the Senate, by design.
There are 100 Senators elected to six-year terms. Amendment XVII [for our presidon’t o’blowme, that’d be 114 Senators–two from each of the 57 states].
There are 435 Representatives (by the by, called “Mr.” and not “Congressman” or anything else) elected every TWO years.
The Senate also has several particularized powers that the House does not. See, e.g., Wikipedia: “As a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the “advice and consent” powers (such as the power to approve treaties) is a sole Senate privilege.[16] The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue; and has exclusive authority to impeach officials; and choose the President in the event of an Electoral College deadlock.[17] The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented. The Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members (currently one hundred, two for each of the several states), and larger constituencies per member (in all but seven delegations); the Senate has been informally referred to as the “upper” house, with the House of Representatives being referred to as the “lower” house.”
So which is more important?
Depends. The Senate would seem to be more powerful.
Forgive me, this is off-topic, I know, but I can’t find a suitable topic to ask in.
Doug Giles is reporting : “According to CBS, St. Louis, Pastor Rodney Francis, of the Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church, wants to keep kiddos away from guns, so this summer his church is planning a “toy gun buy back” program. How quaint. I kid you not: A. Toy. Gun. Buy. Back. Sounds like he’s setting up the next generation to be victimized slaves to bad people and policies.”
Does anyone know where and when this will be? If you do know or find out, lemme know.
I can get my hands on, literally, THOUSANDS of toy guns fairly cheaply.
Anyone wanna do a ‘toy gun buyback’ run to St. Lou? Maybe catch a ballgame?