Colonnade

Issue date: 9/21/07 Section: Opinion

    Among my most important duties as a journalist, is the duty to give a voice to opinions and points-of-view that might be over-looked in a rush to hop on the bandwagon.  Two weeks ago, a horrific injustice was done to one of our fellow students, Wesley Crafton.  I would like to make clear that I'm not friends with Wesley Crafton, in fact I've never met him.  However, on this critical issue I feel it is necessary that we present an alternative point of view than that presented by the school and The Colonnade last week.
    Wesley Crafton isn't a homicidal maniac or terrorist like some people might think.  In fact, he's more of a patriot than a terrorist.  He has served the United States in the Marines.  Furthermore, he was planning on continuing to serve his nation as a police officer.  As reported two weeks ago, "he had no previous violations or noteworthy problems on his disciplinary record."  All of his weapons were legally licensed to him by the United States government.  The only crime that he committed was that he brought three handguns on school property.
    The first thought that came into my mind when I learned that he had brought legally licensed guns onto school property was: why would he do it?  Was it so that he could kill dozens of students for whose freedom he would have been willing to die?  Was it so that he could threaten students whom he is hoping to one day protect as a police officer?  Or did it have anything to do with Virginia Tech?  Could it be that when Virginia Tech happened in April he thought that if only someone else at Virginia Tech had a gun then maybe the murder rate wouldn't have been so high?  Considering the honorable background of this "criminal," I'm more inclined to believe the latter possibility.
    There's no question that Wesley Crafton broke a law by violating the state's zero tolerance policy.  But just because a law exists on the books, doesn't mean what he did was wrong.  Martin Luther King Jr. was imprisoned numerous times while standing up for his civil liberties.  Mr. Crafton, might have felt that he was standing up for his second amendment rights.  What Wesley Crafton did certainly did not justify the disdain he was treated with by the school administration which promptly e-mailed the whole GCSU network with an announcement that made it sound like they caught Osama bin Ladin.  Nor did it justify the front page Colonnade criticism which brings up a reference to the Virginia Tech massacre in the very first sentence, yet conveniently neglects Crafton's history of serving our great nation.
    I still can't get over the irony that the government licensed him weapons and then arrested him for just having those weapons they licensed him.  It almost sounds to me like if you are in college and you live in school owned housing that you are forced to give up your second amendment rights.  While I support the government taking away second amendment freedoms of violent criminals, I hardly understand why it's in the government's interest to take away the freedoms of those that go to college.  In terms of deciding who is allowed to exercise their second amendment rights, the government does not differentiate between a violent criminal and a college student in school housing.
    This even brings in the question as to why we have zero tolerance policies and if they are successful.  Most states adopted zero tolerance policies after the massacre at Columbine in 1999.  The premise was simple.  School age children shouldn't bring guns or any other weapons to school and if they do there will be zero tolerance for them.  That later expanded to drugs, alcohol and even cigarettes in some cases.
    Unfortunately, this policy was written very broadly and included things like threats which can be  determined in the ears of the beholder.  Just this month, a 13 year old at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek, Ariz., was suspended for five days for doodling a gun on a sheet of paper.  The school interpreted the drawing as a threat to the other students.  In light of this recent event, I would like to recommend to every student at every school, if you're in class don't draw an outline of the state of Fla., or you might also be suspended for a week. 
    I can't help but think about how times have changed.  On the Brady Bunch, ideal father Mike Brady taught his son, Peter, how to throw a good punch so he could fight Buddy Hinton who was picking on his younger sister Cindy.  Now, if Peter Brady were to punch Buddy Hinton it would be a virtually automatic suspension and with another fight or two would be an almost guaranteed expulsion.  And it even makes me question if we are inhibiting children's creativity by having these very strict rules which judges mostly on what the child is thinking at the time.  Could this be a precursor to "thought crimes"?  Many school districts across the nation have moved to transparent book bags out of fear that a five year old girl might be packing a deadly weapon in her Hello Kitty book bag.  This makes me very concerned that we might be stunting an entire generation of children by inhibiting their personal creativity with our strict societal norms.
    Lastly, I think it's important that all Americans realize that guns are not bad.  Bad people are bad.  If we don't blame planes for causing 9/11 then it's pointless to blame guns for committing a homicide.  It's easy to say that we would all be safer in a world where no guns existed.  Maybe so, maybe not.  But that's not the real world.  In the real world guns exist.  And so do bad people.  And sometimes there are even bad people with guns.  It's times like that when you are really thankful for the good people in our society with guns, be it the men and women defending our freedom in combat, the police offers who keep our town safe, or even a fellow GCSU student.

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