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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 2, 1972)
editoriol John vihsbdt cCJfcflCfil GEC.,MWfl W 72 VtHBN IT'toVl JM FAHVAND, OJH v 4 LOTTA DRU6S, mUIM PEOPLE, M3TMUCM CAHM W7VC,flW7BwnS5... m Nebraska potential Nebraska-the good life. This week after enjoying two days of 80 degree weather we can all still plan on some more ski weekends, or ice skating parties, or, if in a sense we are lucky, there may even still be a chance for another huge 16th Street snowball fight. This week, our grand old state enjoyed its 105th birthday. The state numbering 34 in age rank still is healthy and for the most part well. A native Nebraskan was just sworn in to be Secretary of Commerce of the United States. Not bad for a hometown Kearney boy. Students at UNL witnessed a progressive step in their quest for greater independence when visitation rules they have patiently challenged were finally changed. Despite Margaret Mead's disparaging remarks, this was indeed a positive sign of progress for Dear Old Nebraska U. The Daily Nebraskan was proclaimed one of the best college newspapers in the nation. The Cornhusker State was featured this week in Al Capp's cartoon strip, Li'l Abner. The first frame of Monday's panel cartoon contained a billboard labeled, "Welcome to Nebraska, population 1,468,101." Evidence that Nebraska isn't all that bad a place to live comes from all over. After a recent trip to Washington, D.C., a Nebraska native maintained that not only everyone had heard of his home state, but nearly everyone he had met in the nation's capital city either knew someone from the state, was working with someone from Nebraskaland, or was from Nebraska himself. , Ranking number one in underground water supply, size of its football ego, and several other miscellaneous categories, not a whole lot seems to be wrong here that isn't wrong anywhere else. Once the residents of this state realize they actually have something going for them, decide to promote their state instead of belittling everything it contains, and elect more responsible government officals, we may just attain the goal of, Nebraska-the good life. Barry Pitger Money power More power to the Creighton University students who are boycotting classes in protest of tuition, board and room rate hikes. Student leader Ed Hotz said he didn't "think the quality of education here justifies the hikes of the last five years." The boycott is a most effective method of moving prives down. In addition, it is the most effective method of improving the quality of education at Creighton. When it boils down, through all the rhetoric, when the wars are over it and nearly everything in politics is a matter of money. The most direct way of dealing with power structures is at the source: "Don't pay, and you get your way!" Sara Schwieder: Various politicians and sociologists of the liberal left these days are crying out in anguish at what they fear is the administration's "insensitivity" to the Bill of Rights and the supposed all-too-ready eagerness of the American people to compromise it when they feel their personal safety or sensibilities may be subject to violation. It appears, however, that these same liberals are not above doing a little compromising of their own when it comes to the second amendment of the Bill of Rights, and with it, the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Alarmed at growing crime in the United States (although apparently not enough to take the handcuffs off the police and put them back on the criminal), the well-meaning leftists have proposed a bevy of bills in the Congress (right now in various stages of passage) dealing with gun control They range from Congressman Emanuel Celler's, D-N.Y., bill to require all firearm owners to obtain either a federal gun ownership permit or a state permit that meets rigid federal standards, to bills which would prohibit the importation, manufacture, transfer and transportation of handguns, except by law enforcement officers, military personnel and a select government -chosen group of Licensed dealers. Rep. Abner Mikva, D-Ill,, claiming that "registration in and of itself is not going to be sufficient," introduced several bills which would prohibit private possession of handguns through a process of "creeping confiscation." Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh has proposed a bill to outlaw any gun, domestic or foreign, which has no sporting purpose. And Sen. Ted Kennedy, praising arms registration efforts, claims "it will tell us how many guns there are, where they are, and in whose hands they are held." This statement reveals, of course, precisely why not to have universal registration. Should this data be collected, the results could be nationally disastrous if it fell into the hands of those who would lead us into despotism and tyranny. Like information was gathered by Hitler and Lenin while in the process of seizing power in their respective countries. Also hopping on the gun registration, licensing and confiscation bandwagon are the leftist Americans for Democratic Action, the ultra-liberal National Council for a Responsible (?) Firearms Policy and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization of left-wing clergy. The Fellowship has sponsored full-page advertisements in newspapers crying "Disarm America's citizens-ourselves. The country needs a much stiffer gun control law. Insist that all private ownership of guns be outlawed, that the guns now around be collected and destroyed." It should be obvious to all that to compromise any of the ten amendments to the Constitution in effect compromises the entire Bill of Rights. Liberals and the press arise with righteous indignation and vehemently proclaim the sanctity of freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment, if the slightest effort is made to curb publication of anything they deem to be in the public interest. This is as it should be, but the second amendment, no less than any of the other nine, deserves the same consideration. The "monstrous" gun lobby so frighteniitgly depected by the liberal press is a mere figment of the imaginations of the Ramsey Clarks, the Joseph T dings, the Birch Bayhs, the Ted Kennedys, the John Linda ys and other creatures of the left whose stated intention is to disarm America's people. The real gun lobby is the grassroots owner of a firearm, who views with as much alarm any attempt to adulterate his rights guaranteed by the second amendment as tne press does any attempt to sacrifice its right under the first amendment. Furthermore, if gun control is completely foreign to the American spirit and in violation of the Constitution, it is also completely impractical and unenforceable as well. The criminal-and most armed crimes are commit ed by the criminal, not the average citizen-is not about to surrender his weapon voluntarily, much less have it registered by the police. The way to curb gun-oriented crime and lawlessness is plain: enact laws prohibiting bond or bail for armed crime; mandatory, nonpardonable and nonparolable extra sentences tor conviction of armed crime; a new attitude by the courts of this country that the civil rights of the criminal are not more sacronsanct than those of the victim. aJ0? J8? h3 not least' a higher atonal social conscience dedicated to stamping out the breeding places of crime-our slums-and the redirection of the schools of crime-our prisons. AmSLS? w- mi- tne answer t0 a sar and saner m801"118 tougher bw enforcement and a commitment to social betterment for all. PAGE 4 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN THURSDAY, MARCH 2, 1972