Maria Britos/ Contributing Writer
Across the Atlantic, gun control is still a discussion.
The College of Law is hosting “Gun Control: A transatlantic comparison between Europe and the USA Roundtable” to discuss the controversies surrounding gun control efforts in the U.S. and Europe.
The five discussion panelists are Assistant Professors Noah Weisbord and Megan Fairlie, both of the College of Law, local Judge Jorge Perez, French Consul-General Gaël de Maisonneuve and British Consul-General Kevin McGurgan.
In an interview with Student Media, Weisbord said the shootings at the Colorado movie theater on July 20th and at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin on July 29th were the the reason behind the discussion panel.
The roundtable’s focus will be on the value that Americans and Europeans hold about the right for an individual to bear arms and how each culture deals with this controversy.
“The Second Amendment does not necessarily state that the right to bear arms allows for massacres and mass shootings,” Weisbord said.
Weisbord said that Perez, Maisonneuve and McGurgan’s presence will allow for a diverse merging of ideas about the recent shootings and the true meaning of gun control between the American and European cultures.
“Students and the audience are encouraged to take part on the discussion by asking questions or giving their own opinions or commentaries,” Weisbord said.
According to Weisbord, the event is sponsored in part by the Miami-Florida European Union Center of Excellence, a consortium between FIU and the University of Miami that encourages European studies. Other FIU departments, such as the College of Law and the Study Abroad Program, also contributed.
The event will take place on Monday, Sept. 24 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in Courtroom 1000 inside the Rafael Diaz Balart Hall. It is open to the public and entry is free of charge.
Reservations to attend are to be made by Friday, Sept. 21 at calyc@fiu.edu.
“The roundtable’s focus will be on the value that Americans and Europeans hold about the right for an individual to bear arms and how each culture deals with this controversy.”
It seems fairly obvious to me that Europeans value the right to bear arms a little differently. What I’m seeing is two professors and two european discussing personal ownership of firearms in their respective countries.
I’m pretty sure that the european government employees wont be differing from their respective governments’ party line. I’d be curious as to what role the professors are going to play in the discussion. If they’re just going to nod their heads and agree, then I dont see the point.
Perhaps they’ll entertain comments from the audience which might liven things up.
Can’t see the point… liberal academia is as anti-Second Amendment as the UK and France (unless you’re Brad Pitt).
Seems pointless, but then again, what about ‘gun control’ isn’t?
Trying to introduce the event with the obviously asinine statement that the second amendment “doesn’t necessarily” condone mass shootings doesn’t do much for “fair and balanced” discourse, either. Of course the second amendment doesn’t condone mass shooting. Remember that bit from the Constitution about “no person shall be deprived of life… without due process of law”? Rather, the amendment says people should be allowed to own and carry weapons. Presumably this is for the defense of themselves, their property, their family, their liberty, etc., and certainly those that wrote and those that ratified the Constitution understood that it was “necessary to the security of a free state”. I’m as “gun nut” as anyone — I’m carrying one now, in fact — and I certainly don’t believe the Constitution tries to claim I have a right to gun down crowds of innocent people.
These forums are nothing more than an exercise of intellectual fraud. We the people of the United State of America have a Constitutional Republic, like it or not. The issues Europeans and the American left have with guns (arms) cannot be addressed in the ways they want with the near universal understanding of what the Second Amendment (2A) actually means (ordinary citizens can own and carry potentially lethal arms), unless, they can change the depth and breadth of its meaning. That is what they are trying to accomplish in nearly every gun control forum. Sans that, they will just try to shame the arms into extinction. Thousands of years of slavery, bondage, kings, emperors, wars, death and destruction have taught them little regarding the value of personal sovereignty and self defense. May you live forever.
These forums are nothing more than an exercise of intellectual fraud. We the people of the United State of America have a Constitutional Republic, like it or not. The issues Europeans and the American left have with guns (arms) cannot be addressed in the ways they want with the near universal understanding of what the Second Amendment (2A) actually means (ordinary citizens can own and carry potentially lethal arms), unless, they can change the depth and breadth of its meaning. That is what they are trying to accomplish in nearly every gun control forum. Sans that, they will just try to shame the arms into extinction. Thousands of years of slavery, bondage, kings, emperors, wars, death and destruction have taught them little regarding the value of personal sovereignty and self defense. May you live forever.