I saw this letter to the editor posted on THR.  And I feel the need to make fun of somebody, and Jeffrey Dobereiner of Brandeis University, today is your lucky day.  If you were ever wondering about the state of higher education in America, here is your answer.  Apparently Brandeis has decided to arm their campus police.  (About friggin’ time, but this is from Massachusetts, so what do you expect?)

From http://www.thehoot.net/?module=displ…90&format=html

 His incoherent ramblings are in italics.  I’ve got to pick this apart, because this is perhaps one of the stupider things I’ve seen in quite some time. 

Better lighting and stakeouts more effective than pistols and bullets
By Jeffrey Dobereiner  

Okay, just the title is a dead giveaway that the author is living in a magical fantasy world.  You’ve got a crime problem.  You stake it out and catch the bad guys, and then what?  No guns?  Take them into custody with your reason and debate skills?  This ain’t England.  Our criminals will eat you alive, and if you’ll notice, even Brit cops have access to guns now.  But I digress, let’s continue with this foolishness.

Obsessing over safety is by no means cool, but having to live in fear is quite unpleasant. I am forced to ask, then, why Brandeis Public Safety dedicates itself wholeheartedly to the wrong things, while leaving gaps which affect the student body.

Right off the bat, the author indicates that his brain isn’t firing correctly.  For you folks that flunked English 101, this paragraph is called Foreshadowing.   

Brandeis is a pretty safe campus. We don’t have security guards stationed in all of our dorms, we don’t have random ID checks, and we don’t need these things. We have the fastest parking ticket response time in the country, and we don’t need that either. But most of all, we don’t need officers with guns. 

Okay, Brandeis is so safe that cops don’t need guns, because, after all, bad things never happen at a school.  Jeffrey might not have a security guard stationed in his room, but I’m willing to bet that he sleeps in a bicycle helmet, and all the pointy corners in his dorm room have been taped over with foam padding.   In debate terms, what Jeff just did was set up what is known as a Strawman Argument.  This is where you state something absurd (random ID checks, guards in your room) and assign that belief to your opponent.  This is one of the lower forms of debate tactic, right above calling somebody a doody head. 

What threat could possibly strike our campus which would require our police officers to fire upon someone?

   Jeff, do you live in a cave?  Are you really that stupid?  Uhh… how about bad person needing to be shot?  I was going to bring up Virginia Tech for example, but the author brings it up himself below.  It is usually an indicator of a really stupid argument when in your own pitch, you bring up facts that make you look like an imbecile.

  Guns are tools of fear and intimidation, and the presence of officers wielding firearms will doubtlessly have a subduing effect on campus speech and student spirit.  

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that our intrepid author wet the bed well into his teenage years.  I don’t know about you guys, but I can barely function when there is a gun present.  Which means since I’m usually wearing a .45 and work in a gun store, I spend a lot of time being intimidated and subdued.   

Recently, Andrew Meyer was tased relentlessly and without merit by campus police officers at the University of Florida, simply for asking too long a question of John Kerry.    Actually, the tasing was a result of not doing what the cops asked him to do, which was leave the scene.  Then when he resisted and fought, he rode the lightening.  For a good analysis of this, go read Lawdog’s blog.  He can explain the merits far better than I ever could.  

Last year, UCLA police did the same thing to a student at the Powell Library because he wasn’t fast enough showing his ID. And that was non-lethal weaponry!  

  Point of order from somebody who sells this stuff, there is no such thing as non-lethal weaponry, only LESS-Lethal.  I could kill you with a pillow.  But I still don’t get what Jeff is getting to here, as these examples don’t have anything to do with cops having guns.

  Brandeis boldly skipped tasers, and went right from pepper spray to pistols.

Oh, there is his point…  And what a sad little point it is.  Because he found a couple of examples where cops used force against students, by his reasoning then surely his local cops are just going to skip over that whole Force Pyramid thing and shoot him for getting lippy.  Wow, they’ve got some really mean cops up there in Kennedy land. Now that is what is called a Logical Fallacy, which is a typical liberal way of looking at the world.   
This knee jerk reaction to the Virginia Tech tragedy involved little to no input from the students it claims to protect, and is being adopted far too hastily.   Uh, Jeff, I thought you couldn’t think of any reasons why we would need guns at school…   Hello… Crazy guy shooting people sounds like a heck of a good example to me.

  A small panel during the summer months, with student views represented by Union insiders, hardly qualifies as open dialogue.   

If by dialogue, you mean poorly-reasoned claptrap like the Brady propaganda you’re regurgitating all over yourself, then I can’t blame the panel at all.  Outrage and feelings don’t make you smart, and just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean you should share it, because frankly, my 7 year old can articulate a clearer argument than you have here.  

The answer to diminished gun violence is not more guns – it’s the implementation of better mental health facilities for the student body.   

And what if the next school shooter wasn’t a student, but just decided to walk onto campus… But Correia, that could never happen, and we’ll disregard all the times that has ever happened.  Besides, everybody knows that good mental health facilities are the answer to violence, which is why we don’t have violence anymore.  Ironically, some of my best students and customers are mental health professionals, apparently they know enough about crazy people to know to carry a gun.

  While the terrible actions of Seung-Hui Cho can’t be forgotten,   But people like you had already forgotten before the bodies had cooled…

  or overstated,   Jeff, I’m guessing you’ve never seen anyone shot in the face before.  Let alone dozens of people.  That’s kind of hard to overstate.  But I don’t live in Magic Fairytale Unicorn Land like you, so I wouldn’t know.

  giving our police more lethal weapons is not the way to prevent such an incident.  

For once, I agree.  Give the lethal weapons to the STUDENTS.  They’re the ones that will be there when the bad things happen.  Police can only respond after the fact.  Here in Utah, we’re not having an argument about arming cops, we’re arming students, faculty, and staff.   Oh, that concept ought to make Jeff’s poor brain explode.   Shockingly enough, we haven’t had any problems.  “Student Spirit” and other nebulous crap like that is doing just fine.  See, I missed out on the whole “Academic Expression” stuff, because I went to college to get a piece of paper that said I was entitled to get a job that paid better.  That was it.  I suppose the longer a person isolates themselves in the world of academia, where all opinions are equally valued, then the more idiocy, like this article, will make sense.  

 The police at Virginia Tech were, at the time of the massacre, carrying firearms.  And if the shooter had decided to fight them, instead of killing himself, how exactly were the cops supposed to deal with him?  Oh, I’m sure Jeff would have given Cho a hug, told him that everything was okay, and that they just needed to discuss his feelings in the sharing circle. 

 That is not to say there aren’t ways to make our campus a safer place to live.   

Yep.  Allow students with concealed weapons permits to carry guns, you idiot.  It works pretty damn well for us.

    Recently, there have been massive numbers of cars broken into in J lot and around the Charles River apartments. An officer told me that the break-ins are continuing, and as I walked back to my Grad today, I saw a friend of mine’s driver-side window knocked out. This means that there are criminals, presumably from off campus, coming here regularly. They have no fear of capture, and why should they? 

  Yes, because your unarmed police might be forced to yell “STOP!” or something.  I rolled my eyes so hard when I read that, that I think I injured myself.  

The few closed circuit cameras set up to watch our cars clearly aren’t cutting it. Ah, but, here’s what guns will do for us: Thief one: “Man, let’s rob the cars on the Brandeis Campus. We can go unarmed because those cops don’t have guns. We’ll just run if we’re seen.” Thief two: “Dude, I heard they’re going to start arming their cops with pistols.”

Thief one: “Well hell, I guess we’ll have to bring our guns, then!”

(High Five)

 Yes, because that is exactly how it works in the other 200,000 separate jurisdictions in the US that have armed cops.  I can’t hardly get to work because of all the gun fights cluttering up all the major intersections.   
We’re pumping $100,000 into weapons training and shiny pistols for our cops.  

 Oh my gosh, Jeff brings up a great point.  Holy crap.  I’m stunned.   $100 K is a lot.  They’re paying too much.  FBMG could outfit a PD of that size, with armor, guns, and training, for a lot less money.  Somebody on the Brandeis PD should give me a call.  

 With just one hundredth of that, I know how to stop the thief. Hire a security guard (or a ninja) to stand behind a tree near J lot. 

 Anytime ninjas are brought into an argument, I just keep on walking…     

When they see someone about to shatter a window have them run out and throw a net on the criminal!

   Yes, because the net is the best weapon ever for fighting crime, well, almost as good as the Bat-erang or Wonder Woman’s golden lariat.  Just a tip for people who want to write letters to the editor, see, at this point Jeff is just kind of rambling, and making himself look stupid.  If you are woefully ignorant of a topic, you really shouldn’t talk about it, at least not in a public place, where people will be tempted to beat you up and take your lunch money.

  Then they can call the Brandeis Police, and the problem will be resolved. 

  And if the guy resists, or pulls a gun, the PD can use Hug Therapy, or perhaps light some scented candles.   

  In all seriousness, paying a couple of officers overtime to stake out the parking lot would be prudent. 

 Oh good, he’s serious now.  For a minute, I thought that an American college student was actually dumb enough to believe this tripe. 

Overzealous security steps like giving pistols to our police officers don’t compensate for glaring oversights like a lack of sufficient cameras in J-lot, or low numbers of patrols. 

Only in a state that keeps on reelecting that bloated pimple, Ted Kennedy, could arming police officers with pistols be considered “Overzealous”.  In the rest of America, our cops are already armed, and we’re having this discussion with our state’s equivalent of Jeff about regular people carrying guns.   

The addition of firearms will make us less safe by bringing the number of guns on our campus from zero to many.  

 I’m not sure what Jeff’s major is, but it certainly isn’t math.   Let me break this down for you, Jeff.  I don’t know if you’ll be able to understand something that isn’t drawn in crayon, but the problem isn’t guns.  It is bad people who hurt good people.  I know in your academic world of moral equivalence, there is no such thing as good and evil, but in real life, there are bad men in the world who will hurt you and take your stuff, regardless of how you feel about it.   Bad guys with guns?  Bad.  Good guys with guns?  Good.   Now here is the tricky part.  Bad guys break laws.  I know this is shocking, but bear with me.  If I’m a bad guy, and I’m planning on committing 50+ murders and other capital crimes, and then killing myself, I don’t really care what your “Campus Safety Policy” says about guns on campus.  The only thing that is going to stop me is putting bullets into my vital organs until I leave you alone. Jeff, I hate to tell you this, but there are people in this world who will rape you to death, through your skull.  They’re bad, they’re tough, and they don’t give a shit about your school spirit or freedom of academic expression.  They’ll hurt you because it brings them pleasure. The only thing that protects people like you, from people like that, is people like me.  Deal with it, you pampered little ass-muppet.     Let’s allocate these resources to things that will actually make us safe, like better lighting on the sketchy walk to J-lot. Or a ninja. Our endowment has been “growing at record rates” – the least our administration can do for us is ensure we don’t get robbed while parking on their property.
Monday October 1, 2007  

Somebody should take some of that endowment, and hire a new Logic professor, because apparently your current one sucks balls.