Opinion Outpost June 3

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Guns on campus?

The call came from the UCLA campus just before 10 a.m. – someone had opened fire with a gun.

Ultimately, we should be glad this was a tragedy for fewer people than feared when the phrase “campus shooting” first popped up on screens. But that society will just shrug this off is tragic in its own way. That the nation accepts gun violence as commonplace, as a reasonable trade-off for some romanticized view of every gun owner as a soldier against tyranny, is the continuing tragedy.

— The Times Editorial Board

Los Angeles Times

 

The majority of colleges pretend that disarming responsible adults makes their students safer.

The university police are unable to prevent violent crimes, and it is heartlessly arrogant to disarm potential victims, leaving them and those they could protect at the mercy of rapists and other predators.

Armed citizens frequently save lives and prevent violent crimes, often without firing a shot. Nearly all mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones,” and some of these massacres have been stopped by civilians who intervened after retrieving a gun.

— Nelson Lund

The New York Times

 

Allowing guns in classrooms (against the will of the overwhelming majority of professors, staff and students) will not only increase risk but, as has been argued elsewhere, will stifle classroom debates – an essential component of learning.

I fear that sharing a classroom with students “packing heat” will stop shocking us as it now does, and that we will become something other than what we are: Women and men committed to teaching and learning in environments where everybody can freely express his or her ideas.

— Javier Auyero

The New York Times

Immigration

Reuters reported that the government soon plans to start a 30-day “surge” of immigration raids to remove families that the administration says did not show up for their court appearances or who have defied orders to leave the country.

The Obama administration is making targets of women and children who should be protected, not punished.

These Central American families flee unspeakable violence at home to find themselves alienated and disenfranchised here.

Central American mothers and children represent a refugee crisis, not an immigration issue. They deserve compassion – not expulsion.

— Raul A. Reyes

CNN

 

Modern migrants on the poorer or less stable side of a border are ambiguous about what they want. They seek out the security and bounty of mostly Western systems … but not necessarily to surrender their own cultural identities and values.

If Mexico and other Latin American countries were to adopt many of the protocols of the United States, their standard of living would be … indistinguishable from America’s …

Or if immigrants from Latin America were to integrate and assimilate as rapidly as possible, there would be less of a need to contemplate walls.

— Victor Davis Hanson

The Washington Times

 

Opposition to the surge of non-European, nonwhite immigration is a bedrock of the Trump campaign, a crucial element of his attack on political correctness and a key component of the loyalty he elicits from non-college, middle- and lower-income voters opposed to liberalized immigration — voters who believe they have been dispossessed.

The refusal of Democrats and the American left to hear — or to grant some legitimacy to — the grievances of white America as it loses power and stature to ascendant minorities and to waves of immigrants from across the globe undergirds the Trump movement.

— Thomas B. Edsall

The New York Times

 

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