by Students and faculty at George Washington Carver High School in Rancho Cordova, California are upset due to a new indoor gun range being developed near the school. According to the city’s planning department, the land is zoned industrial and gun ranges are a permitted use. Translated from PlanSpeak, that means the gun range meets the previously established criteria to be located there and must be allowed to operate in that location.
So, you can guess what the students did next – they held a protest complete with what appear to be professionally made signs. They had slogans like “Legal? but WRONG WRONG WRONG” and “Way TOO CLOSE for Comfort”. It appears from the news story that the “protest” was organized with the full cooperation of school officials. One has to wonder if the students really organized it or were given it as class assignment for a grade.
Reason.com comments on the story and the slant given to it from the reporter from CBS Sacramento:
The local news story spins this as a beneficial lesson in participatory democracy for the high schoolers. True enough, I suppose. If nothing else, they learned that when it comes to politics and governance, think-of-the-children paranoia trumps property rights every single time.
So much for the Lockean rights of life, liberty, and property.
I wonder how much the teachers and local democrtic organizations were involved in the planning of this demonstration? Just asking!
A few years ago, Carolina Sporting Arms here in Charlotte filed a text amendment to the Charlotte zoning ordinance to allow indoor gun ranges under certain conditions (buffer distances, construction standards, etc.) in business — not industrial — zoning districts. The purpose of the text amendment was to allow them to build a gun range to expand their retail gun sales business. CSA is located adjacent to an apartment complex.
Not a peep was raised from the adjacent residents.
I realize that we're talking about North Carolina versus the People's Republic of California here, but one would think that residents, rather than student, would be concerned about a gun range moving in next door to them. The range has now been open for about 2 years, and, as far as I know, has not been a problem for anyone.
It is a wild differentiation here in California folks. I should write a book on my first 16 months here. Guns here are truly hated and people are indoctrinated at every level.
Even what is considered gun friendly folks here have little understanding of the way of the other States, or interest. It is the way it is here, is their response.
I was talking about some meat eating in my office, and a woman went to HR and complained about me eating lamb chops. She said, "I never new it was a baby sheep, now I ruined it for her." HR said for me to avoid discussing guns/politics/religion in the office. (I shit you not) VP of HR reiterated she knew someone whose kid shot them-self with a gun. Ughhh.
On weekends I work Woman On Target trainings and visit the indoor range close by to teach basic pistol classes. The American Legion will not let me teach Refuse to be a Victim classes, the apartment I live will not let me teach RTBAV classes after they had break ins. (They have a huge meeting room) The RTBAV class has no mention of firearms in it. But it written by the "dreaded NRA" .
I have to eat, I have child support to pay still, so I need to work here until I can find elsewhere to move.
But the weather is great.
Dan is right…..nice people out in CA. but mention anything outside of their peculiar beliefs and world view. Some turn into raging moonbats. Others will do their best to convince you otherrwise or tell you that you don't know what your talking about….
Roger V. Tranfaglia
Pretty simple, actually. The local government in this case is civilly prohibited from doing what these protesters are asking the government to now do. What the members of the gun club want to do is perfectly legal in the absence of non-existent zoning laws which otherwise might limit what they want to do. In an effort to stop this otherwise legal activity, the protesters are now all the same asking the local government to go beyond its present authority and prevent the otherwise legally unrestricted right of an apparent minority to freely assemble so as to thus restrict their liberty to do something that remains perfectly legal and not in any way restricted by any existing ordinance. The local government of course has its hands tied and can not without cause, simply stop people from freely assembling and engaging in legal activity just because some other people don't like it. This is because without legal precedent in justification to prevent the free assembly of people, preventing free assembly is a violation of the 1st amendment to the Bill of Rights. But instead of teaching this to her students, and that a majority can not infringe upon the protected rights of a minority just because that's what the majority might want to do, the Principle of this school is instead, by all other observances, using the popularity of the majority as a spring board in launching a political career.
I say this because the classic means of a politician gaining political notoriety is to get behind a populist cause that can not succeed within the means for change afforded by the existing civic structure. And that is exactly what this school's Principal is using publicity from her student's protests and gaining notoriety in doing. As far as the launch of her political career is concerned, the worst thing that could ever happen would be for her current cause to succeed and the shooting range to never open. If that were to happen, the people who are presently behind her would soon forget her as their champion, while those who presently believe she is utterly lacking in critical thinking skills would not forget and remain to never think of her as anything but an irrational idiot.
If the shooting range opens, and it will, people will continue to look to her as someone who could have made them happy in stopping the opening of the range had it only been she had had more political influence while only just that of a High School Principal. Later, she will then run for office and the people who had once stood with her in a failed cause against an unresponsive 'big bad government' that didn't do what they wanted it to do, will vote her into political office….Just watch.