Opinion
Nebraskan
Editorial Board
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Chris flopfensperger.Editor, 472-1766
Dionne Searcey.Opinion Page Editor
Kris Karnopp..,..Managing Editor
Alan Phelps.■.Wire Editor
Wendy Navratil.Writing Coach
Stacey McKenzie.Senior Reporter
Jeremy Filzpdtrick.Columnist
Deadly intent
Shootings prove gun-control necessary
Bullets cross all language barriers. Unfortunately, warnings
don’t. That’s why a 16-ycar-old Japanese exchange student
in Baton Rouge. La., was killed Saturday night when he
failed to understand how “freezCf^can be English for “don’t move
or I’ll shoot.” ✓
Yoshirhiro Hattori was going to a Halloween parly when he
walked to the wrong house by mistake. The neighbor apparently
heard someone in his yard and shouted: “Freeze!”
Hattori, who was in America for only two months, kept walk
ing. The neighbor shot Hattori'to death with a .44-calibcr pistol.
Pick up any newspaper in any city in the United States.
[Lhanccs arc, a story aDout a
shooting will headline the front
page. Last month in Texas a 17
year-old opened fire in an
Amarillo high school hallway,
wounding six students. Last „
year a student at the University
of Iowa in Iowa City shot six
people to death.
The exchange student’s
story seems almost common
place to Americans. Just another
young punk getting what he
deserved, some people will
■ think. But the story devastated
| many Japanese. Every national
TV network in Japan covered
the story in Monday evening
broadcasts, explaining Ameri
cans’ other meaning of “freeze.”
Owning almost any
David Badders/DN weapon in Japan is illegal, be it
a gun, sword or dagger. Japanese gangs fight with fists or kitchen
knives. There is so little street crime in Japan that the language
has no word for “mugging.”
Imagine. A county where one can feel safe walking even in a
rough neighborhood because weapons arc illegal.
America cannot go that far. The Constitution guarantees
Americans the right to keep and bear arms. But the interpretation
of that guarantee needs to be reevaluated, and this country needs
* tougher gun control restrictions at all levels.
President Bush has come out against the Brady Bill, a measure
that would require a background check and 5- or 7-day waiting
period before owning a gun. Chalk up another reason to vote
against Bush on Nov. 3.
Right here al the University of Ncbraska-Lincoln, graduate
student Arthur McElroy of Bennet allegedly aimed a M-l semiau
tomatic rifle at his fellow classmates in Ferguson Hall.
One can scarcely bear to imagine the horror of what would
have happened if the gun would not have jammed. But that “what
if’ must be viewed as “what should not have been.”
State Sen. Brad Ashford is working to introduce legislation that
would make it harder to obtain an assault rifle. “There arc rifles
that are clearly designed to kill. They’re not designed for hunting.
They arc types of weapons we should not have in our society, a
free society surely,” Ashford said.
Violence cannot be stopped. But every means must be ex
hausted in hopes of hindering it.
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Call for change just propaganda
Change — it has become the
mantra of the Democrats and
the Pcrotistas this year.
“Change—yeah, we need change,”
goes the familiar refrain. “Twelve
years of Rcagan-Bush, supply-side
stuff hasn’.t worked, I’m afraid of
getting laid off, I’m
afraid for my kids’ fu
ture, the deficit is ter
rible, and we need new
people. Change—yeah,
we need it real bad!”
Hold on a minute.
“Change” is an utter
fraud, a convenient
smoke screen for the
complete intellectual vapidness of the
Democratic campaign.
How elsecan one explain the alarm
ing signs that many Americans arc
prepared to vote for socialism (called
“investing in America,” and “pulling
people first”), rather than the conser
vative supply side that they over
whelmingly endorsed in 1980, 1984
and 1988?
It’s the tangible result of the
Democrat’s propaganda machine —
perhaps the most efficient since the
one of Joseph Gocbbcls. And the media
is buying into the Big Lie — lock,
slock and barrel.
The economy is the most oft-cited
reason for this change mania. But it’s
not that bad—unemployment is down,
housing starts arc up and worker pro
ductivity is up. But we don’t hear that.
And if you’re one of those people
who think: “Oh, it just can’t get any
worse!” I’m here to tell you it can.
Remember Jimmy Carter? Thirteen
percent inflation? Twenty percent
interest rates? Gas lines? I do. And I
don’t want to sec them again.
The 1980s arc, 1 suppose, a victim
of their own success. We had coniinuX
ous, booming growth from 1983 to
1990, unparalleled since the end of
World War II. People began to expect
more, because the’80s—and Ronald
Reagan — gave them more.
Ask yourself this question: Arc
you, or your parents, better off now
than you were 12 years ago? I’m
almost willing to bet that the answer
is yes for two-thirds of you!
But it doesn’t matter now. We may
be about to embark, God forbid, on
what Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
columnist Paul Greenberg called a
“Clintonized culture.” It is a prospect
of “genuine, authentic phoniness,” he
writes. “The past isn’t even prelude. It
isn’t,period.” It’sa massive rewriting
of history that would make George
Orwell green with envy.
For example, we keep hearing
about how the rich got huge tax breaks
and the middle class got hit for more.
Wrong.
According to the Arkansas Demo
crat-Gazette, Slick Willie’s home
town rag, the top 1 percent of income
earners paid SI00 billion in taxes in
1988, as compared to $19 billion in
1980. This, despite the fact that the
marginal lax rates were 70 percent in
1980, and only 29 percent in 1988. It
makes sense—cut taxes, people make
more money, they have more to in
vest, they make more money on top of
that, and they have a larger tax base.
Supply-side economics worked!
But the media won’t tell you, and
people don’t want to believe it. For
some reason, they hate people who do
well for themselves.
Perhaps the best illustration of this
came in Thursday night’s debate. A
man employed as a domestic media
tor stood up and asked the candidates,
“Since we arc all symbolically your
children, what will you do to person
ally guarantee our needs?”
I just about fell out of my seal. It
was perhaps the stupidest question of
the whole night — and there were
plenty of stupid questions.
The correct response to this stupid
ity is: “What arc you going to do to
guarantee yourown needs?” Nopresi
denihas the kind of power to person
ally guarantee the prosperity and hap
piness of every American, and I
wouldn’t want that guarantee. A presi
dent is not Big Daddy, and this kind of
thinking leads to Big Brother. A presi
dent sets a tone, and passes policies
that allow each American to ensure
his own needs are met.
It’s called self-reliance, people.
It’s called the work ethic. It’s what
bui 11 this country from a wooded back
water to the superpower it is today.
Sure, a government could person
ally employ its people to ensure jobs,
provide housing for all so none want,
and provide other essential services
like health care. In fact, some coun
tries did, until recently. They were the
Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact
nations.
This squalling about wanting gov
ernment to meet our needs is a pa
thetic comment on the decline of the
American character. It’s what change
is all about. Americans arc whining
about how bad it is, about how Bush
doesn’t care and doesn’t “get it” —
another overused chestnut this year.
They begin to sound like a crying
child whose parents won’t buy him a
shiny new toy. They don’t realize that
to truly get ahead, you do for yourself,
and you don’t rely on government
largesse.
But if Clinton and class-envy win
out in November, kiss it goodbye,
folks. Soak the rich, the middle class
and the foreign corporations that bring
jobs here, confiscate their profits to
pay for ail of Clinton’s social engi
neering, and we’ll think of today’s
economy as robust.
And the same people who cried the
loudest about how miserable they were
and how we needed change will be
boo-hooing the loudest then. They
wish for all the benefits, but not the
will to pay for them.
America seems to have taken John
Kennedy’s words and twisted them
around. We now ask not what we can
do for our country, but what our coun
try can do for us.
And we dare to call it change, or
fairness. I call it what it is — a fraud.
And 1 pray that you and every other
American realizes it before you go
into that voting booth on Nov. 3 and
not after Jan. 20.
Kcpfidd is a graduate student in history,
an alumnus of the UNL College of Law and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist.
Toilet paper
1 am writing as a Neihardt resident
who, for one, is not justa little bit tired
of being greeted by the eyesore of
freshly toilet-papered sorority houses
first thing in the morning.
Because I assume that this is being
done by members of a certain frater
nity or fraternities, my question is
this: .Don’t you guys have anything
moro produc live to do? It seems to me
that the Greek system has enough
image problems without this pre-pu
bescent vandalism — not to mention
very environmentally incorrect litter
ing.
For crying out loud, guys, I out
grew “T.F.-ing”houscsabout the same
time my voice was starting to crack.
Arc you really so starved for enter
tainment?
Another thing I do not understand
is why the administration does not
seem to take an interest in seeing that
this is stopped.
I can’t imagine it would take a
police task force to figure out who the
individuals responsible arc, and I
would guess that a few stiff lines
would nicely dissuade such wasteful
and unsightly nonsense.
T. Halsey
Lincoln
