If one wants to argue from a school funding standpoint, I can understand that, but to argue from a “diversity” standpoint is just crazy. Forced integration is not the answer. What about the folk (black, white, etc) that want their kids to attend a majority black, white, etc school? What about the folk that choose to live in neighborhoods that reflect their race?

What about HBCU’s. Should the gov’t forcefully integrate them and make some Hispanics, whites, and Asians attend them?

We are also looking at this from a black and white standpoint. What about Asians and people from the Middle East? There are a lot of Koreas that kids go to majority black schools because their store and home are in majority black school districts. Should they be forced to send their kids to majority white school?

In my opinion education is more of a class issue than a race issue. If I want to send my kids to an excellent school, all I have to do is get an apartment in a real good school district. If I want to send my kids to a crappy school, all I have to do is move to a crappy neighborhood.

We will return to segregated schools, religious persecution, back alley abortions, and homophobic discrimination.
You know that this is not true. Please tell me that you don’t believe this.

I think we are talking about the same thing. What I believe is that teaching family history is merely a start. Of course family history should lead to an interest and a deeper study of history in the classroom. I don’t think we disagree, rather, I wanted you to take the argument one step further.

Connie Eccles wrote: “Teach Family History in Schools! …and our kids will learn to love history”

Yes, teach family history for sure. But what about teaching community history as well? Family history is a place to start helping students understand the value of critically exploring a past that is close to their own lives but it does not go far enough. While your family may be interesting to you it probably has little or no interest to me. Sorry, that’s just a fact of life. Family history, in the end, provides students with little more than the ability to learn about primary source documents and how to analyze those documents. Fitting that family history into a broader context is what makes it interesting. My family immigrated to the United States from eastern Europe in the late 19th century. That fact alone is dull and uninteresting except to me and the rest of my extended family. Were I to connect the story of my great grandparents and grand parents to the larger story of immigration I might have an interesting history to explore.

Nice as far as you go Connie, but in order to have a lasting influence you have to go a little but further than you did.

…. This is my reply (from Connie Eccles)

You missed the point entirely. I was not trying to make history important to you personally but to the students in the class in respect to their personal history. I beg to differ in your assessment. Learning personal history is what opened up my curiosity about history. I now care about the epidemics, the wars, prohibition, medical advances, the depression and more because although it did not affect me, it affected my ancestors.

And as far as it being interesting to the teacher, that is not a requirement. A teacher’s challenge is not just to teach facts but how they apply and matter in the student’s life

Have fun and take some pics!

This got me to thinking. A lot of people on the left (and right too) have this view that the gov’t should provide us with a lot of stuff. They say that abortion is constitutional under the 4th amendment. Some go as far as to say that the gov’t should pay for it.

Now even some of the most liberal folk recognize that the 2nd amendment recognizes an individual’s right to own a gun. If I put some of the leftist thinking together, that would mean that the gov’t should be buying some of my guns. If the gov’t is going to pay for abortions, I know that they can get me at least a revolver, pistol, rifle, and shotgun.

Last time I check there was no right to healthcare, food, etc, but the gov’t is paying for that stuff for millions of people. I know that they can get me a few guns for my collection. They also need to provide nice shooting ranges, targets, etc. I think that I need to be writing my senators and reps.

Now on to the article… Ron Paul was the only dissenting vote. As usual he is the only real person in DC that actually stands for the constitution. This is just another step toward more gun control measures. If the Dems keep power in 08 and Lord forbid a Democrat gets elected president, all kinds of gun control stuff may come out of DC. I gotta stock up on guns now in anticipation of the gun laws that will be coming down.

Roger…can you write something on the Parker vs. DC decision that the federal court recently ruled on? In case you don’t know, it was the case that said that DC can’t ban guns.

Now be nice to us pro-gun folk. One of us may have to save your life one day.

I must say, however, that as usual most of the comments made here miss my point entirely. I support gun control. I support registration of ALL guns and strict enforcement of that requirement. I favor stiff, seriously stiff, penalties for those convicted of using a weapon in the commission of a crime. I favor punishment not retribution so I do not favor the death penalty.

All that being said, I don’t have anything against one that would own a weapon for purposes of hunting, target shooting (although I still don’t see the point), skeet shooting (I don’t get that either). But many people take pleasure in those activities, even calling them sporting, although if you are the deer or the duck I would hardly think they see the sport in it all. I like automobile racing, open wheel, Formula 1 road racing not NASCAR. Many of my friends don’t get that. My point was that if you take pleasure in shooting and you have a qualified weapon have at it. No one should or ought to block your action. Since one no longer needs a gun to join the militia (last I looked the military provided all the guns one needs) I take that role out of the discussion.

So I’ll try not to be humorous when speaking to anti-gun control folks (except maybe LLR who seems to get my humor most of the time).

Hitting a little ball with a club, walking after it, and hitting it again seems pointless to me.

On a serious note, Sebastian’s right. There aren’t a whole lot of anti-gun arguments out there that hold any weight, but if you want real discourse, don’t talk down to the opposing view.

Sebastian,

First off I have heard of your blog before. Pretty nice read. I have loaded you up in my RSS reader for future readings…

I have been hanging out here are Roger’s blog for a while now. He’s an OK guy. Sure he takes jabs at gun owner/ownership, but I don’t think that he means any harm. I don’t even know if he knows what an “assault weapon” is. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know b/c it changes with each new piece of legislation that is written. It’s a 12rd mag this week or a rifle with a folding stock next week.

Now Roger I missed that little comment that Sebastian called you out on. That was a little below the belt. I would expect that from some of the other blogs that I read, but not here. You’re better than that.

I am one that actually like shooting at paper targets and I don’t consider it an infantile sport.

You know, it’s the fact that so many people who are in favor of gun control make snide remarks like this that those of us who enjoy, and want to keep enjoying, the shooting sports, refuse to listen to what, in many cases, are legitimate concerns. Engage us, don’t mock us.