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Wednesday, October 31, 2012 The Statement
THE JUNK DRAWER
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Wednesday, October 31, 2012 // The Statement7B
The right to bear arms
PERSONAL STATEMENT by David Tao
letter from the editors_
by dylan cinti and jennifer xu
our years ago, students took to the streets of downtown Ann Arbor
to celebrate the election of Barack Obama. University students
crowded alongside high-schoolers and other townies,' all marching
without any planned direction. After all, this was a joy that had to be
taken in collectively, strangers alongside strangers, all in celebration of a
presidential victory that seemed likea generational victory as well.
But the political landscape is a little different now.
This is not to say that Obama hasn't been a good president. We're not
out to make political statements about either candidate in this issue.
Because regardless of how the election turns out, we doubt there's
going to be the same post-victory march through the Deuce. This elec-
tion has been polarizing and highly political, with candidates pandering
to partisanship to an unprecedented degree. For the people represented
in this issue, though, that pandering has effectively blurred party lines.
A representative example is that of LSA sophomore Robert Cernak, a
student who says that he's upset with the polarizing efforts of both can-
didates. "There's a lot of mudslinging going on," Cernak said. "There's a
lot of people who are really angry at everyone else."
For people in this issue, such "mud-slinging" makes party lines dif-
ficult to discern. And with the blurring of these lines, we're forced to
ask ourselves questions. This is an election that makes us to confront
our core values. It's an election in which every vote must be an informed
vote. So regardless of who you vote for, make it count.
In closing, we'd like to say this: there is no excuse for not voting.
It's not only your right but your duty to do so. We don't mean to sound
preachy, but we've heard quite a few students say they're not voting
because they'd just be "choosing between the lesser of two evils," or
some variation on that. That's not a valid reason, it's a pathetic cop out.
If you really hate both candidates, then you can always write someone,
in. On that note, the legendary Tom Hayden also wrote something for
this issue. #Hayden2012?
IDS\O U
random student interview
by kaitlin williams /illustrations by megan mulholland
Welcome to the Random Student
Interview,where we take a non-
partisan look at your political
decisions.
So, this is perfect. You're both
named Kelly and one ofyou goes
here while the other is from MSU.
You're even wearing green pants!
Kelly 2: Yeah. I had to rep myschool!
OK. I won't hold it against you
since it fits the subject for this
week's interview: decisions!
So, you're both probably over-
whelmed with decisions lately
with the election coming up...
Kelly 1: Elections? What about med
school?
Kelly 2: Yeah, and graduate school!
I'm here for Prospective Student
Day for the Master's in Social Work
Program.
Oh I see, youladies have more
important things...
Kelly 1: The election's pretty impor-
tant, but...
But, let's get down to the real
issues. Romney or Obama. Who
would you sleep with?
Kelly 1: Obama.
And why?
Kelly 1: If
he can get
Michelle, he
can get me.
I can follow that logic. So what
aboutyou (Kelly2)?
Kelly 2: Well, I go for personality,
and every time I look at Mitt Rom-
ney, I'm just disgusted because he's
such a douchebag, in all honesty.
Well, this is not a non-partisan
Kelly 2: And Obama's athletic. Have
you seen that man play basketball?
Yes I have. I've seen him playhbas-
ketball with kids, which is really
adorable.
Kelly 1: He played with actual pro-
basketball players. Which is really
cool
I hadn't seen that. So, who would
you rather get a drink with? Let's
pretend Romney would have a
drink for a second.
Kelly 1: Obama. He'd be way more
interesting.
Kelly 2: Is that even a question?
Obama again.
Well, I'd make the argument for
getting a drink with Romney
because he claims to have not had
a drink before...
Kelly 2: So you want to get him real-
ly drunk and listen to his horrible
political viewpoints?
Kelly 1: And I could tape it and leak
it to the Internet.
Exactly. We've got to be strategic
with our answers here. So think
for a second before you answer
this one. Who would you rather
go to the mallwith?
Kelly 2: I feel
" like Romney
4 might have
better taste.
Kelly 1: Rom-
ney might
spend more
money on me!
Good one.
Kelly 2: How old are Romney's kids?
I think they're closer to our age. So
he might know our style better.
Kelly 1: Yeah. Obama's girls are little
still.
Obama and Romney are?
Kelly 1: No.
Kelly 2: No idea.
Obama's 51..
Kelly 2: Obama's pretty young!
Kelly 1: That's really young for a
president.
And Romney's 65.
Both Kellys: What?
Kelly 2: He looks good for 65.
Kelly 1: I'm glad I said I would sleep
with Obama, because I'd definitely
rather sleep with a 51-year-old than
a 65-year-old.
Kelly 2: That's literally my grandpa's
age right now we're talking about.
Kelly 1: That's a little scary.
Kelly 2: Obama's got young kids for
being that old though.
Kelly 1: But Michelle is hot.
Yeah. Michelle is hot. Would you
like to work out with Michelle?
Kelly 1: Yeah! She brought all of the
"Biggest Loser" contestants to the
White House and worked out with
them.
Kelly 2: One of my residents last
year was on "The Biggest Loser!"
Kelly 1: Sorry, we're getting off-topic.
No, it's cool. I need to do group
interviews more often. One more
question, and this one is the most
important. What should I get for
lunch?
Kelly 1: Wendy's.
Kelly 2: Noodles & Company is my
favorite.
And justwhen I thought we could
agree on everything. I'm going
to have to go with Wendy's. Ihad
a bad experience at Noodles. Go
Blue!
-Kelly 1 is an LSA senior and Kelly
2 is a senior at Michigan State.
Guns are loud.
That's probably the first thing I.
learned when I took my first fire-
arms training course this summer. They're
also surprisingly difficult to control; it's
nearly impossible to fire even the smallest
rifle accurately from a distance. Of course,
that wasn't a problem for the home-
schooled, 8-year-old girl shooting next to
me. Her shirt had an image of a Revolu-
tionary War-era minuteman accompanied
by slogans about marksmanship and its
essential ties to American heritage. And
as I walked downrange to examine my tar-
gets, I noticed her'disturbingly accurate
groupings.
Growing up middle class in the intense-
ly liberal Maryland side of the Washing-
ton, D.C. suburbs, guns weren't seen as an
unalienable right or a part of a long tradi-
tion of taming the wilderness. Guns were
for criminals and crazy people. Anybody
mildly informed about local affairs saw
this as blatantly obvious: D.C.'s gun vio-
lence numbers weren't great, and Balti-
more, a 45-minute drive away, was even
worse.
It seems disingenuous of me to say this
- my hometown of Bethesda was recently
ranked the top-earning town in America
- but these attitudes were also
backed up by personal experi-
ence. There were the Beltway
sniper attacks in 2002, when John
Allen Muhammad and his teen-
age accomplice, Lee Boyd -Malvo,
killed nine people and injured
three with a high-powered rifle.
Five of the shootings took place
in my school district - four of
them in a little under three hours.
As the news filled with reports
of more shootings, the county
kept schools under lockdown for
a harrowing three weeks, tight-
ening security even further once
the killers threatened area chil-
dren. Then there was high school,
where a fellow student ended up
in the hospital after accidentally
shooting himself. A little more
than a year later, three more stu-
dents were shot by gang members
while riding public transit; one of
them later died of his injuries.
That being said, I always found
guns fascinating, in the perverse,
immature way that adolescent
boys inevitably find loud, poten-
tially harmful things fascinat-
ing. I attended a math/science
magnet high school with a peer
group full of immature adolescent
r ends so;I .fp11d plenty of oppor-
tunities to . indulge these pas-
sions for the dumb and dangerous. Most
of these exploits involved substances from
the chemistry lab and a lighter: one time,
we soaked tennis balls in a liquid alkane,
lit them on fire and played catch, hoping
the alkane would burn out before the ball
hit us in the hands or face. Another time,
we made a makeshift smoke bomb using
potassium nitrate from a science project.
We're lucky none of us were hurts expelled
or arrested.
So it was with a mild sense of childish
excitement that I found myself making
the three-hour trek to Philadelphia this
summer to visit one of those high-school
friends, a pre-med student balancing a
summer research position at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania with MCAT prepara-
tion. It might have been the stress. Or it
might have been the boredom that inevi-
tably ensues from being stuck on a college
campus after all the students have left.
Whatever it was, he found himself mak-
ing an extreme kind of Internet impulse
purchase: a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle, the
civilian version of what most of our troops
carry in Afghanistan. He told me about his
purchase over GChat one day and asked if
I wanted to learn how to shoot it with him.
You bet I did.
And that's how I found myself at an out-
door shooting range an hour west of down-
town Philadelphia with a loaner rifle in
my hands and cheap pieces of foam stuffed
in my ears, looking downrange through a
pair of protective glasses on loan courtesy
of the UPenn hospital. Many of the people
around me were from even farther west of
the city, the types of small-town residents
that then-Sen. Barack Obama accused of
deflecting lack of economic opportunity
by bitterly "clinging to their guns and reli-
gion" in 2008. Many on the far-left agreed
with Obama's assertion, just as many on
the far-right agree with Republican presi-
dential nominee Mitt Romney's comments
on the "47 percent."
But Obama's comments, and their belit-
tling implications about intelligence, are a
little off the mark. It's hard to argue with the
idea that these people cling to their guns -
they do, with obvious pride. But the general
idea that these people were dumb and aggres-
sively ignorant couldn't be more wrong.
Accurate target shooting takes an abun-
dant level of skill and intelligence; there's a
long list of complicated factors you have to
keep in mind - a list that extends beyond
the point-and-shoot braggadocio embraced
by the media. Sight picture: keep the sights
aimed just under the bulls-eye. Natural
point of aim: angling your body just so to
avoid muscle strain and keep your shots on
target. Trigger squeeze: squeeze gently, but
deliberately, and ease up after you've fired
so your sights stay on target. That's before
you factor in sling holds, ;which can cut off
circulation, but vastly improve accuracy.
For a soft city kid shooting a rifle out-
doors for the first time, I wasn't too shab-
by. With a .22, my shots were good for a
159 on the Army Qualification Test (AQT),
making me a "marksman" by military stan-
dards. On the other hand, my scores on my
friend's much larger AR-15 are something
I'd rather not discuss. Over the course
of the weekend, I gained a great deal of
respect for target shooters and their way
of life: their love for their craft, their dedi-
cation to safety and their respect for the
destructive power of their weapons.
That's not to say that the culture shock
ever really wore off. We've been over how
liberal my hometown is, and I've split the
first almost-20 years of my-life between
there and Ann Arbor. Trading driveways
filled with "Obama for America" logos for
a-parking lot filled with "Super Conserva-
tive" and "Screw the IRS" bumper stickers
See GUNS, Page 8B
interview, so by all means, feel
free to be honest. Do you guys know how old