Gainesville Sun Editorial Staff Against Right to Defend Yourself

There is a move in the Florida Legislature (pushed by the NRA) to pass a law requiring employers to allow their employees to keep guns in their cars. The reasoning is that to not allow this unreasonably interferes with the right of the People to keep and bear arms.

The Gainesville Sun is clearly anti-second amendment. "Imagine the media field day when police haul Disney's CEO out of the Magic Kingdom in handcuffs for criminally violating the Second Amendment rights of the guy in the Goofy suit." In context, the Sun editorial staff doesn't think that people should be arrested for violating the Second Amendment.

The Gainesville Sun seems to think that workers being able to keep guns in their cars will contribute to a dangerous work environment -- disgruntled employees will have their weapons only a short walk to the parking lot away. The Sun did not give this much thought before they put it in print. Guess what? A disgruntled employee always has a weapon a short walk to the parking lot away. It's called a car. Cars can be used to ram the side of the building, run over former co-workers, etc. In addition, someone who is sociopathic enough to start killing people at random isn't going to care about rules forbidding them to have a gun in the car.

The Sun needs to grow up and realize that the bad guys don't follow rules. Only the good guys do. Having a rule that puts moral, law-abiding people at a disadvantage is a criminal act, in my opinion, and should not be allowed.

Evidence that the Gainesville City Commission Seeks to Make Driving Difficult

I have a suspicion that the Gainesville City Commission hates cars and wants to do everything in its power to discourage people from driving. The way the traffic lights in this city are set up is miserable. It is impossible to go more than a block without hitting a red light. The powers that be have made no effort to fix this problem (or if they have, it has failed so miserably as to not have made any difference). Neal Boortz addressed this problem on national radio a few months ago commenting that Gainesville traffic was worse than Atlanta traffic at rush hour -- he claims that Atlanta traffic slows to a crawl... which is better than Gainesville traffic which comes to a dead stop.

Ever go to the Royal Park complex on a Friday evening? Ever notice that there is not nearly enough parking, and that fistfights break out over parking spaces from time to time? I have been told that this is because there is a minimum range of parking spaces that a municipality has to authorize for a new development, and that Gainesville only authorizes the bare minimum of parking spaces that it can get away with. The reason for this, I am told, is so that people will be encouraged to ride public transportation.

Their solution to traffic problems on University Avenue? Shrink it from 4 to 2 lanes and make it one way. I'm not kidding. This is a real proposal that is brought up from time to time. There is also talk, I hear, about revitalizing the downtown by shrinking Main Street to only two lanes. I don't know about you, but I avoid places where traffic is bad... if that plan for Main Street were realized, I would be avoiding the downtown area unless absolutely necessary.

The current problem is roadwork. That's a responsible thing, right? Well, the City of Gainesville has figured out a way to make it as annoying as possible to the drivers. Now, say you have to do work on several major roadways at the same time. It would make sense to fix them one at a time right? Concentrate your resources on fixing one road and finishing the job before moving on to another one. Good idea, right? Well, apparently, it's too good for the City of Gainesville. The idiots in the city commission have figured out yet another way to make driving in Gainesville a major pain. The roadwork is proceeding in such a way as to hinder as much traffic as possible. A few months ago, they started tearing up 13th Street. Then they stopped, leaving the roadwork unfinished and going over to 2nd Avenue next to the Creekside mall and tearing up the bridge, completely blocking off that road. Concurrently, they also move from time to time over to Williston Road and work on that. They have three, and who knows how many more, concurrent projects going on. Yesterday, they were working on 13th Street and Williston Road at the same time. These are major roadways and they intersect each other. Not good. Stopped traffic on 13th Street and Williston Road during rush hour.

I believe if someone ran for the Gainesville City Commission on a traffic and parking platform, they would win. We need to start complaining loudly. Our government has no business trying to discourage us from driving. They job is to accommodate us. That's why we elect them. If they aren't doing this on purpose, then they're just incompetent. In any case, they need to go.

Think before you write

As I flipped through the Gainesville Sun today, my eye was drawn to an editorial entitled Canned hunts are wrong. The author seems to hold the view that "[a]nimals are sentient, living beings, not pieces of property to be bought and sold." Ummmm... excuse me... sentient beings? And what scientific evidence do you have to back up this claim? What evidence do you have that animals might be sentient? My advice is that, in the future, you should edit all unsupported statements out of your letters to the editor if you want to be taken seriously.

When wondering if animals are sentient, consider the following. Animals will steal from and/or kill one another if they have the opportunity. They don't have much choice in the matter. Your cat, whom you feed every day, will still hunt for birds. The cat is not hunting out of need; it is hunting because it is compelled to by its nature. Humans are different. We can choose to ignore our animal nature. Animals cannot. The evidence is in favor of animals not being sentient. There is nothing wrong with eating animals. Animals kill and eat other animals. Plants kill other plants for a better place in the sun. All living things struggle against each other.

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Update: I have since met the author of this letter and she is a very nice person, so I will not be naming her in this post anymore.