Weapons on campus
John L. Odom
weapons of any sort that they won't allow a picture of an armed person
on the internet unless it is current news, or in an approved textbook.
They block the japanese sword site with a photograph of General
Yamashita wearing his katana, passing General McArthur at the Manila war
crimes trials. I appealed and asked for a review because it is a
historicaly important picture. I was turned down because the photo
showed a weapon. Since the Columbine High School incident some school
administrators have gone stark raving mad!
John Odom.
Manen van, Michiel
I don't understand anymore!
I have the idea in my head that it's fairly simple for a US citizen to go
out and buy any kind of fire-arm, even full automatic machine guns.. right?
Then how does anyone explain this hypocrisy?
Regards, Michiel.
Meik Skoss
>I don't understand anymore! I have the idea in my head that it's fairly
simple for a U.S. citizen to go out and buy any kind of firearm, even full
automatic machine guns. Right? Then how does anyone explain this hypocrisy?<
Wrong. Each state and, in some instances, local municipality, has its own
laws and regulations regarding the purchase and possession of firearms.
Remember, the U.S. is not a monolithic country where (except in issues
governed by federal law) there is a single way of looking at or doing
thing. That's why it is named the United StateS of America. This diversity
of approaches is both a boon and a bane to our society in a number of ways,
but it works (more or less) for us.
My state, for instance, has a very restrictive gun laws. Other states
don't, and an individual can either carry openly or obtain a CCW permit
without a lot of hassle. To quote a Japanese saying (really!): it's "case
by case."
Thus the inconsistencies you note.
Meik Skoss
Koryu Books
Koryu.com: http://koryu.com
Kim A Taylor
shows south of the border that scared the bejeepers out of me.
I don't think it's all that mysterious why martial art weapons get banned
while fencing equipment, baseball bats or firearms don't. First is
perception, fencers don't seem to get into the same number of violence
fantasies in their heads or in the movies. When was the last time you
heard a fencer talking about how to set up a target that represents an arm
or a body with a spinal column inside it so he could check out whether or
not he could cut through it with his sabre? Or how effective a foil would
be "on the street". Then there's the movies, what percentage of epee
players want to become "the next Chuck Norris" and show everyone how
dangerous they are against 8 or 10 bad guys using only their bare blade?
(After the bad guys push them and their paper thin "peaceful philosophy"
past the breaking point by killing their dog of course). Anyone remember
the 8 billion ninja movies of the 80s and 90s?
Violent fantasy is a big part of the martial arts, both those who practice
it (hell I used to have dreams that lasted for hours about having a fight
and using aikido... the bad guy just kept getting back up, no matter how
hard I threw the guy HE JUST KEPT GETTING BACK UP AGAIN... nightmares more
like it), and those who watch it on the screen and on the video games.
That explains fencing equipment (it's a sport, fencers don't spend
massive amounts of time and bandwidth saying it isn't a sport, so
people believe it's a sport) and baseball bats (also a sport, nobody
puts out megabytes of data in an attempt to prove how lethal baseball
bats are) but not guns which are, without a doubt and statistically
proven to be killing vast numbers of Americans every year. (Not to mention
the spillover of these things into Canada).
So what does explain it? The second, and much more important point is that
martial arts weapons are an easy, easy target. If the combat shotgunners
spent as much time talking about what a fraud the quickdraw handgunners
down the street were, as martial artists do about each other, you'd have
guns being banned all over the place. Instead what you've got is a massive
(real or assumed) power base that wields considerable political clout
that says "guns are not to be banned".
Get the same money and organizational power behind the "martial arts
lobby" and you'll have your "constitutional right to bear katanas in
dorms" protected.
This will never happen because the martial arts are mostly about ego
gratification and you don't get that great feeling of superiority without
standing back from everyone else and saying "they're frauds and fakes and
have no talent" while, of course, staying safely away from anything that
would bring you into direct comparison. Things like joint classes or
allowing your students to practice with other instructors, competing in
the sporting aspects of the arts, teaching at other places etc. etc. As
long as we do our own "secret and ancient" thing with a captive audience
who doesn't know any better, we can be king of the world. Exclusive
knowledge of ancient fighting secrets and restricted access to wise old
fighting monks in mountain temples in Japan is a pretty intoxicating
feeling.
Lord forbid that we should admit that your average journeyman "sport
boxer" or "varsity wrestler" or (shudder) "sport fencer" would take pretty
much any "martial arts master" apart... especially the old fat ones who
haven't done much more exercise than tell their students to "drop and
gimme twenty" in 10 years.
And where would we get the money for this political lobbying anyway? After
having been in the "commercial side" of the martial arts for about 10
years now I've come to a few conclusions. 1. there really aren't all that
many people in the martial arts, I wouldn't be surprised if there were no
more than 20,000 people in all the internet who pay any attention to all
the "martial art" oriented newsgroups and lists. There's 1500 on iaido-l
and about half that on aikido-l the last time I saw their stats page.
The last couple of issues of Martial Arts Fitness had a circulation of
about 17,000 and was mailed to about 1350 martial art and fitness centres.
The demographics showed our readership to be about 80% male, 18-65,
married with children, university educated, professionals with household
incomes of $65K and up. 70% owned at least one car, 90% used vitamins and
supplements, most did some other sport, and 76% had contacted advertisers
in the magazine.
A pretty damned good demographic for martial arts suppliers and
instructors to go after you'd think? Could we find enough advertisers to
keep the magazine going? No. Could we get martial arts organizations to
advertise their presence to the population at large? No. Advertise (or
even just announce) their tournaments? No.
Why? Either the commercial outfits were really stupid, or they were
satisfied with getting and keeping their own little segment of the market
and hanging on as tight as they could, hoping their students would not
drift away to the guy down the block. Hell we shipped the magazine to
loads of dojo and I'd be willing to bet it got chucked right into the
trash before the students got a chance to see it and "get contaminated by
incorrect ideas". Sensei Joe doesn't want competition from Sensei Fred,
he might lose a couple of students.
Of course nobody ever talks about the difference between fighting for a
bigger piece of a small pie and making a bigger pie all around. That would
assume that we feel the martial arts are good in and of themselves and
should expand... while we all know that they should be kept small and
powerless and secret and exclusive and those guys down the street don't
really have the right to teach that stuff since their headmaster three
generations back got his papers from a guy that kicked a dog in the street
one day.
Kim "ranting again"
On Fri, 4 May 2001, Manen van, Michiel wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> I don't understand anymore!
> I have the idea in my head that it's fairly simple for a US citizen to go
> out and buy any kind of fire-arm, even full automatic machine guns.. right?
> Then how does anyone explain this hypocrisy?
==========================================
Kim Taylor
mailto:kata...@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 ext. 3700
Dept. Animal Science
U. of Guelph, Guelph Ontario
Canada N1G 2W1
FAX 519-836-9873
Join iaido-l: http://listserv.uoguelph.ca/archives/iaido-l.html
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Carl Donath
There are about 300,000,000 people in the USA - that's three hundred million.
Many of them are scared silly of weapons - even pictures of weapons - because
their sole education about weapons is movies and over-hyped news reports of
rare occurrences. A few of those terrified-of-ideas people manage to get high
managerial positions in schools, and in turn implement rules like the one you
cited.
Put another way, the USA is so big that really really wierd events happen
occasionally, and when they do, our very large news system puts them on the
front page. Even though something could be really rare, with this many people
such things happen on a regular basis and as a result many people think such
things are common when in fact they are actually rare. It's just a matter of
statistical probabilities.
In the case you mention, some idiot in charge of a school has a debilitating
fear of weapons, and forbids even their image in the school. Yes, there are som
other schools that do the same. These _few_, because they are unusual, make the
news, and since the biggest news items make it all the way to the Netherlands,
you see the story and understandably get confused.
Yes, there is a big push to keep weapons out of schools - with tens of
thousands of schools, a few just go too far.
Yes, weapons are generally available - but legality varies widely: weapons of
all kinds are virtually illegal in New York City, while you can openly carry a
machinegun in Arizona.
Remember that the USA is essentially 50 countries: with that many people and
variation, you hear some wierd things that seem contradictary.
And if USA law doesn't make sense to you, trust me: it makes less sense to
those of us who have to live with millions of pages of regulations.
Manen van, Michiel
Be that as it may, I think it's still curious that a picture of someone (in
this case a former war enemy) carrying a sword is banned from viewing..
Isn't it?
Greetngz,
Michiel
-----Original Message-----
From: Meik Skoss [mailto:msk...@KORYUBOOKS.COM]
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: weapons on campus
At 10:25 AM 5/4/01 +0200, you wrote:
>I don't understand anymore! I have the idea in my head that it's fairly