SJU to Hold Panel on Gun Violence Wednesday
January 21, 2018
St. John’s will host a panel on gun violence at the Little Theatre Wednesday Jan. 24 from 7 to 9 PM. The event, held in collaboration with a local newspaper, the Queens Tribune, will feature five panelists and will be moderated by SJU Law School Vice Dean and Professor Larry Cunningham.
“Basically it’s going to be kind of a free-flowing conversation about the second amendment, gun control issues, your rights, are those rights still prevalent in this era of almost weekly mass shootings,” Brian Browne, executive director for University Relations, said. “I think this is going to be a good event.”
Browne, who also serves as the Assistant Vice President for Government Relations at the University said he was approached by the Tribune about working together to execute the event on campus.
“This is an issue that…It impacts all of us, here in America. It’s worth having the conversation no matter which side of the gun control debate you’re on,” Browne said.
Panelists for the event include George Grasso, a supervising judge in the Criminal Court of the City of New York, Gene Lopez, a supervising judge for the Criminal Term in Queens, Francesco Catarisano, an assistant district attorney in the Kew Gardens Trial Bureau, Steve Wasserman of the Legal Aid Society and Oleg Chernyavsky, director of legislative affairs for the New York Police Department.
Browne said attendees will also have the opportunity to ask questions during the discussion. The event is free and open to all students.
Gene Ralno • Jan 21, 2018 at 10:22 pm
This article simply parrots the timeworn talking points constantly howled by Bloomberg, Schumer, Pelosi, Murphy, Cuomo, et al. Leftists like spectacular shootings because they evoke sympathetic emotions. It’s easy. In Texas, a shooter was denied a license to carry but due to a clerical error, passed the NICS check. That one caused the Fix NICS bill. In California, a shooter used ghost rifles and two sidearms registered to an unnamed person. That one caused great discussion of home-made firearms. Perhaps if big media would stop hammering the million peaceful, lawful citizens who own firearms and focus on identifying the nuts, felons, terrorists and illegal aliens, we might see some progress. And perhaps if big media journalists would actually look at the data and analyze it for themselves, they might shift their positions a bit.
Big media see what conservatives see. We now know colossal mistakes are being made by the government in operating the NICS background checking system. Nobody trusts big media anymore. We all know how incompetent the government is in controlling illegal immigration. We all know the incompetence of government in preventing illegal drugs from flooding into the U.S. We know what a train wreck we face with government medical care, national debt, entitlement abuse, Social Security, Environmental Protection and on and on. Who on God’s green earth really, deep down, believes it’s smart to entrust the safety and security of our families to the incompetent bureaucrats who would administer new gun control laws?
When thinking about the latest mass shooting, remember this. Governments that carry out mass murders fear armed citizens and it’s precisely why disarmament of the governed always precedes a purge. Taken together, all the mass shooting deaths by nuts, felons, terrorists and illegal aliens throughout history for the entire planet is infinitesimal compared to the total of mass killings of civilian citizens by governments. As a reminder, the worst purge since America’s birth occurred in Russia less than a century ago. Although our founders feared a foreign king, it’s the reason for our 2nd Amendment and throughout human history, it has been a very bad idea to allow any government to disarm its people.
These latest atrocities should serve as a wakeup call for all the states that governments will do whatever it takes to confiscate privately owned firearms. Leftists were beaten badly during Obama’s reign. So they’re starting over with little things like magazine size, bump-stocks, ammunition taxes, license fees, sound suppressors, bullet shapes and on and on. Eventually, they’ll get around to universal registration again. Clearly, they need universal registration because it fundamentally transforms all owners of firearms into dependents. Once they know who the owners are, they’ll choose which of them are allowed to be licensed. It’s the consummate entitlement. Democrats need the hundred million owners to be dependent on the government in order to convince them to vote for more leftists. It’s the heart of their strategy.
Conservatives have declared they’ve talked enough already. Leftists have hammered this issue for so long and so hard, it’s totally worn out. We already have 20,000 laws and they’re the best our legislators can write. And they still haven’t delivered the leftist goal of total disarmament. The agenda is clear and there’s nothing left to talk about. If they want the Attorney General to “force” states to launch colossal projects to input all their felons to the NICS database, conservatives will support it heartily. If they want to punish everyone who falsifies the required BATFE Form 4473, that’s fine too. If they want to fully punish criminals who violate firearms laws in conjunction with their other crimes, fine. But the usual stuff we’ve already been over a hundred times? Not a chance. No more talk.