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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 28, 1999)
lie Battalion o PINION Page 5 • Wednesday, July 28, 1999 ■ players an| heir plea the source.1 idition ofari ?r will be reel hours - oi service ant ne of $L : .| 11 players ale* aids to avcieS ig on campc : H and UCLA, i ems are ckj 1 players iSrU n court, rer::3 e is about 1 )ossible Ion terility. Aboij in not fathei ■, Armstrong! child in Oc:I can be con:* ored before! said he atJ ertile. deterniina:::| ompetitivepi to the pliysfl are sappe:l onths, some! er chemothq' ought that j; determinatic:| k on his inhorn said aur de Frai . Just to emi »uld not have* er person." [ imphant is ai fact that itii it the cortiztaj stem camel eing ignor&'| if Armstrong steroid, it w; 1 his chance;, er return. '; n the world sk. me lawyers are planning to use recent youth violence as a SMOKING GUN to start lawsuits against gun makers. Can they really do that? NO O Suing gun manufacturers chips away at right to bear arms, abuses purpose of lawsuits lliilllfil Marc GRETHER Moving the debate over gun control into courts will help stir public dialogue on issues T he fight against the pre, ■derating )Wer of the rong’s via * ^ has . ^ u„„i: told a new nee shouldt< story. It is. of hope for t niggling c sease. lefield in courts, he recent iision of the ational Asso- Caleb MCDANIEL he French tition f or t ] ie Advancement of t their xOTMored People (NAACPJ to file liti- ortant thandjon against gun manufacturers rage. But,! la welcome innovation to gun- uld people bntrol efforts that have been sum- ation that mily kicked to the ground for n Bonaparte feinths by the machinations of the [ational Rifle Association (NRA). ■Although this latest suit has en- ftd a particularly high level of ers is an atewlicity, it is only the latest devel- graduaie .cinient in a legal movement j|inst gun makers that has been ■ducted behind the political scene for some time now. According to an article in the May 17 issue of The New Yorker magazine, the same legal beagles who have barked down Big Tobac co into incredible settlements in the past year have now turned their attention to Big Guns. Not surprisingly, these public- interest lawyers have been hound ed at every turn by conservative gun advocates who believe pursu ing policy changes through litiga tion instead of legislation is unde mocratic. But in spite of these criticisms, efforts to file lawsuits against weapons manufacturers are both justified and judicious. First, they are justified. As un popular or even unsuccessful as their cases may turn out to be, they do offer a legitimate case. Just as tobacco prosecutors were able to establish that the in dustry cloaked the risks of smoking from the public, anti-gun lawyers can argue that gun makers are not straight with their customers about the risks of owning a gun. According to The New Yorker, research shows that more suicides are committed with guns than homicides, and that gunowners are more likely to suffer accidental self- inflicted injuries than to use their weapons against an attacker. Litigators can use these facts to argue that “gunmakers and their defenders knowingly mislead the public when they defend guns as a safety protection — just as Big To bacco misled the public about the addictiveness of cigarettes.” As unhappy as such an argu ment may make the likes of Charl ton Heston, the case is much like the typical suit based on consumer rights. If lawyers can establish a rea sonable product risk (which they should have no problem doing with guns, which are designed to injure), they have a reasonable lawsuit. It might not win in court, but it has a right to be heard. And in reality, winning is not the most important goal of the new anti-gun lawyers. According to at- / Pagei re future! coach. /■ must ha 1 Dt a player !e hopes t :urnout at uts and i/VomeiVs advances in jobs, olitics shatter glass ceiling JOWA CITY, Iowa (U-WIRE) For the first time in its histo- JNASA put a woman, Eileen lould alscPHi ns > i n command of a mis- illn. > the ICHF Hewlett Packard is the first of tthing, Srp 20 largest publicly owned rr a succeWmpanies to name a woman as Resident and CEO, Carly S. Fio- ch interedna. 1 said, ■The U.S. Women’s Soccer left out.Team and the Women’s Nation- iliBasketball Association prove pt women’s sports can draw a wd and can succeed. ■Women continue to shatter K glass ceiling in many ca- y Eers, many companies and many sports. I But getting to the top is only half of the struggle. 1 It may be difficult for some to understand why it is impor tant for young girls to have peo- ■e such as Mia Hamm and Bandi Chastain to look up to. iBut it is extremely important, ■hen a little girl can say that slje wants to be like Mia when site grows up, and not like Mike, there is a greater sense of ownership in her personal idream. No one can tell her she is limited by her gender. She is Watching someone like herself not allowing her gender to be a limiting factor. am. ib The paths are not only being made for young girls dreaming of flying among the stars when they grow up or for those who want to kick the winning goal. Women at universities will benefit from the advances made by their elders. “The issue of women's equality ... is not a feminist issue. It is a human issue." Barriers are being broken every day, and as more women receive a college-level educa tion, their power in the work force can only grow stronger. Business and industry can no longer afford to marginalize women, nor can the political world. Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Rodham Clinton both demon strate that women are capable of following their own dreams, independent from those of their husbands. It would be nice to think that women in new roles of power are placed there because the glass ceiling is being removed willingly by those who put it in place. But there might not be any choice but to remove it in the years to come. Slowly, the number of women in college is growing larger than the number of men in college. Such growth is expected to continue, and the gap is expect ed to widen in the next century. At the University of Iowa, women accounted for 52 per cent of the student population in the ’98-’99 academic year, keeping in line with national trends. The issue of women’s equali ty in the workforce, and the world as a whole, is not a femi nist issue. It is a human issue. Those resistant to women with greater power in the work force will not only do a great disservice to themselves but also to the important women in their lives. Kara Heinzig is a columnist for The Daily Iowan at the University of Iowa. Mike Waqener/The Battalion torney John Coale in The New Yorker, the real objective is just to “stir things up.” “I mean, look, the gun issue’s all over the place now,” he says. “A year ago, it wasn’t.” That insight may be the main reason why taking gun makers to court is the smartest thing consci entious gun opponents can do. Corporations that sell guns are en tities created to make money for stockholders, not to make princi pled policy stands. So, the best way to make corpo rations control a product is to pull at their pursestrings, not at their heartstrings. Threaten to take away their money, and they will listen. This is a strategy that will never work against the NRA, which sup ports guns for principled reasons. Anti-gun advocates must admit their tired arguments against the right to bear arms are not working, at least not fast enough. The only way to control guns now is to go where the money is. And that means going to court. Caleb McDaniel is a junior history major. nee again, gun rights are be ing attacked in America. However, the attacks are now typically being aimed at gun manu- facturers, not gun purchasers or owners. Following recent trends, at tacks on the right to bear arms are being made through the courts, rather than through leg islation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) recently an nounced plans to file a “class-ac tion lawsuit to force gun manu facturers to distribute their product responsibly.” At the 90th annual conven tion of the NAACP, the group’s president, Kweisi Mfume, an nounced this move was prompt ed by the failure of Congress to pass gun control legislation and because of the “landmark ver dict in the Hamilton v. Accu-tek case.” In Hamilton v. Accu-tek, a gun manufacturer was success fully sued after a criminal used its products in a shooting. The NAACP has been on the winning side of many important legal battles in this country, in cluding the landmark racial inte gration case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which challenged the notion of having “separate but equal” schools for white and black children. Their work during the coun try’s civil rights movement was extremely important. In fact, without some of the lawsuits won during the strug gle, some rights may not have been obtained for many years to come. But this lawsuit is fundamen tally different from those suc cesses in many regards. The lawsuit does not chal lenge any existing law or Supreme Court ruling, and it is not morally correct. One aim of the lawsuit is to COLLEGIATE ROUNDUP from U-Wire editorial reports change the gun manufacturers way of doing business by forcing the manufacturers to monitor gun distribution carefully. While this may sound like a good idea, it is not. Like most industries in this country, the gun industry has various components. Some players in the industry work to make the guns; others sell them to the public. Of course, implicit in this equation is the fact that the gun makers do sell the guns to 'the distributors. But once they are out of the factory, they are out of the hands of the manufacturers. Holding gun manufacturers responsible for distribution is just like holding car manufactur ers responsible for car distribu tion. By the logic used in this suit, if a drunken driver killed some one using a Chevy, General Mo tors could be sued. . This would be a horrible precedent. If this lawsuit is won, we will likely see many more lawsuits brought against legally manufac tured items that happen to be .used by criminals. Though many criminals use guns to commit their crimes, punishing the manufacturers will not solve the problem. Moreover, wasting time on lawsuits such as this will ham per efforts to resolve the prob lems. The NAACP has also recently announced a national project to bridge the gap between blacks, Hispanics and whites in Internet access. Through their partner ship with AT&T, they plan to create technology centers in 20 cities. This program has a worthwhile goal and a good plan to reach that goal. The NAACP should stick to projects such as this that benefit its members and, by extension, all of us. But they should drop the law suit, which can do us no good and will definitely harm us. Marc Grether is a mathematics graduate student. Teen drinking still a problem From the Minnesota Daily at the University of Minnesota. Many more teenagers drink alcohol than use il licit drugs. Despite this well-known fact, both Gen. Barry McCaffrey, di rector of national drug policy, and the House Ap propriations Committee have worked to prevent the inclusion of anti-drink ing messages in federal anti-drug efforts. Citing concern that it would “dilute" the cam paign’s basic anti-drug message, McCaffrey has argued against legislation that would have given more publicity to the dan gers of drinking. ... McCaffrey’s anti-drug stance is shortsighted. By focusing solely on illicit drugs, such as marijuana and methamphetamines, teenagers get the mes sage that alcohol is somehow more accept able. Targeting all drug use makes the message consistent — and likely more effective. Members of the Appro priations Committee sug gested that including al cohol-related messages would diminish funding that could be used to tar get other types of drug use. A better response would be to increase the overall funding. ... We know alcohol is the most abused drug among teenagers. Our anti-drug cam paign should reflect this knowledge. lift itimk MOSQUITO REPELLENT ?! edu
