OPINION & EDITORIAL
LTE: Gun control not as popular in Wisconsin
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by Letters to the Editor
Thursday, December 1, 2005
I was touched to read Casey Hoff's heartfelt appeal for the safety of Wisconsin cabbies in your Nov. 22 edition, using them as a platform to make the case that Wisconsin should allow concealed weapons to be carried in public. I can respect Mr. Hoff's opinion that he holds personally on the issue, but when I read his disingenuous nonsense I had to write in.
First off, the reason Wisconsin does not have concealed carry laws on the books is because solid majorities of Wisconsin residents oppose it.
Mr. Hoff tries to bait and switch majority support for the 2nd Amendment, which allows citizens the right to bear arms for the country's defense, and implies that it translates to majority support for people carrying guns around in the streets. He even goes so far as to imply Russ Feingold supports concealed carry because of his college thesis on the importance of the 2nd Amendment. Hilarious. The University of Wisconsin Survey Center in Madison polled 511 Wisconsin residents randomly and 69 percent said they oppose allowing people who can legally own handguns to carry concealed weapons in public.
Secondly, Mr. Hoff refers to FBI statistics that show "substantial reductions" in violent crime rates in states that allow concealed carry. However, Mr. Hoff leaves out the part about the same FBI statistics showing states with no concealed weapons carry laws or states that significantly restrict it did much better in comparative percentages reducing violent crime.
I was particularly humored by Mr. Hoff's blatant bashing of "lefty's lefties" that are oppressing his dreamt-up majority. I wonder if he would call Wisconsin's Law Enforcement agencies in the Justice Department leftists for consistently opposing concealed weapons legislation as a bad idea for public safety.
Mr. Hoff should just drop the pretense that he gives a damn about cabbies and have the candor to make his case without slandering elected officials and denying the reality that solid majorities of Wisconsin's residents do not support his view. I would hope the Badger Herald would have higher standards and not publish such bogus journalism. Mr. Hoff should hail a cabbie and go to a library and get his facts together before he makes a fool of himself in print.
Certainly not the first time and probably not the last.
Todd Schantz
Samuel Stephens (December 2, 2005 @ 10:44am):
Mr. Todd Schantz, if you don't like guns then don't buy them. If you object to Concealed Carry, then move to England and be one of the sheeple and cower in the corner when a thug comes through the door/window, where the criminal has more rights than his/her vitims have. Don't complain when you help from the police, and they show up after you are hurt or dead, because you don't like guns. You are ignorant about your freedoms to own or not to own firearms just like our socialistic politicians, the great and mighty thought police. Try something different, go to a shooting range and try shootig something off other than your mouth. Some people are just ignorant, then others open their mouths and show it.
Anonymous (December 2, 2005 @ 3:48pm):
Todd you are an idiot. You don't what you are talking about and you've proven yourself a fool to all the world. What is this nonsense about the majority? A majority of the people didn't want independence from England. So the majority of the people in Madison and Milwaukee are ignorant morons like you, does that make them right?
Anonymous (December 4, 2005 @ 6:45am):
re: "Gun control not as popular in WI" by Todd Schantz
Sirs: Mr. Schantz distorts historical facts and reinterprets the 2nd Amendment.
Please note, Mr. Schantz: the actual words "the people" appear 5 times in the Bill of Rights. Are you claiming the words "the people", as found in the 2nd Amendment, do not refer to the same "people" for which the Founders were enumerating rights with the 1st, 4th, 9th and 10th Amendments? Please explain how "the right of the people keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" magically transforms into a right of the state?
Since the definition of "infringed" is the same today as it was in the 18th century, exactly what part of "shall not be infringed" do you fail to grasp?
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." - George Washington
Lee McGee
Jeanerette, LA
todd schantz (December 12, 2005 @ 9:03pm):
All these "feedback" comments are laughable and show the true drab colors of uneducated, ignorant pinheads that think carrying a gun in the street makes them somebody. Check yourselves. Its hardly surprising that not a single comment back to me includes any factual rebuttal of my statements. Simply the same old tired "socialist", "idiot" "don't call the cops when you get shot" baloney that can be expected from people who talk tough but in real life are just cowards that spend their existence in the ether of Fox "News" and Bill O'Reiley. Dorks.
Jeremy Hatfield (December 16, 2005 @ 5:14am):
Here's Mr. Schantz's factual rebuttal:
"The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) applauded the Wisconsin Assembly this morning for its progressive 64-32 vote, approving state concealed carry legislation."
Source: http://geekwitha45.blogspot.com/2005_12_11_geekwitha45_archive.html#113465993076999289
How's that for a "dreamt-up majority?" Mr. Hoff just may have been onto something there.
I think we've just seen who the "uneducated, ignorant pinheads" really are in this matter...at least, in the Madison area.
jth
Anonymous (December 21, 2005 @ 3:20am):
I am a native of Madison, Wisconsin who relocated to California about ten years ago. I still consider myself a "cheesehead" and am proud to say I was raised in Wisconsin. That being said, one of the top five reasons I left was demographics. There are far more truck-driving, beer-drinking, gun-toting rednecks in Wisconsin than I care to encounter. This type of individual is not exactly known for his/her ability to think for him/herself, understand the need for change in an ever-changing society, or the ability to lead, and instead follows the crowd as any good little sheep would. Fortunately for our country, those forefathers who fought for our independence were nothing like these rednecks or we would still be following someone else's outdated laws that did not allow for necessary change. You speak of those men so highly and yet you fail to realize they changed our future not by following blindly but by foreseeing necessary change and taking the risk of being ridiculed for attempting to speak out and effect those changes....just as you are now ridiculing Mr. Schantz. You would have made excellent Tories, all of you.
You are correct that we deserve rights as individuals, but what you fail to understand is that when our forefathers spoke of a right to bear arms, they did not envision a society in which gangs would rule the streets as they do now, and where civilians would use those arms to kill others for the sheer "fun" of it, or as a gang initiation, or simply because they did not like someone. I invite you all to walk the streets (or drive the freeways) of Los Angeles for a few days, where innocent bystanders are murdered on a daily basis, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And you actually think those people would still be alive today had they been carrying weapons of their own? Not true. The majority of those murdered never see their attacker, because they are simply hit by stray bullets meant for someone else, or they are just driving down the freeway when someone pulls up next to them and shoots before they even see the gun. If you were anything like our forefathers, you would be looking ahead rather than backwards, and understanding that with changes in society, so too must there be changes in our laws. They gave us a right to bear arms to protect ourselves, and yet ironically, it now seems we need to place stricter controls on individual rights to bear arms, again to protect ourselves, only this time it is because there are simply too many weapons in the wrong hands. I realize this is probably far more intellectual and reasonable than you can possibly comprehend, but I am certain Mr. Schantz will understand the logic, as he is certainly not the "idiot" here.
