RE: Guns on campus, Yes? No?

You present a pretty good argument in your article Guns on campus, Yes? No?, but as someone who owns guns, I'm still going to say that this idea, if it is going to be implemented, needs a lot of refining.

The first issue I have is basic gun safety. When I walk through a crowded hallway between classes, the last thing I want to do is bump into someone and have him or her discharge a round into me. Given, most, if not all, veterans have plenty of gun sense, but that's still a risk.

Secondly, and more importantly, if I were, hypothetically, to decide to shoot up my school, I'm probably not thinking very rationally. I also probably don't care too much about the consequences. I doubt that the knowledge of my fellow students' guns will slow me down a whole lot.

I'm sure there's a way to make this work, but let's not rush this through the works. Just passing a gun to any vet who's going to school is a recipe for disaster.

This little piggy is not a big deal

With the whole pig flu scare, I've heard a lot of people debating what should be done about it. I've heard a lot of people saying that the government should do more. I couldn't agree more. If the US government won't, then the Texas government and the Austin government should go ahead and announce to their respective populations, "This is not the end of the world. It is a flue outbreak. It happens all the time. Stop panicking, you morons."

I am in no way qualified as a pathologist, but a little bit of easy research on the Internet shows that between thirty five and fifty thousand people die yearly from various types of flu. A little more research shows that this trend has been going for a couple of decades. The hog flu is another type of flu. Everyone has missed school with its near cousins. Most everyone survived it. The swine flu might cause a mild statistical spike in flu-related deaths for 2008, but its long term effects will be minimal.

Next, to look at the last major influenza outbreak. It happened in 1918. There is a reason it hasn't come back since. It's not that dangerous. Vaccines have been developed. The epidemic of 1918 piggybacked on the chaos of the Great War's aftermath, not an environment noted for disease prevention.

Let's look at the last flu trend: China's dreaded bird flu. Fewer than three hundred cases have been reported in the past two years. Keep in mind that this was the disease sent by god as the new flood (remind anyone of AIDS?) to purge the world. It did not have any long term ramifications, other than to make pharmaceutical companies much richer as the demand for flue vaccines skyrocketed.

I'm worried that this hysteria is growing. I've seen enough surgical masks on the streets in the past week that it's time for the government to do something. Hopefully they can shake off their love of suspense and drama in time to remind people that the swine flu is not going to reshape the world.