Evaluation of the Week 2 Responses

I agree with the previous posts on the issue of gun control in response to the Tuscon situation. If gun laws were made more restrictive, which is in fact what making them harder to get would be, there would be many people who would become quite upset about it. My older brother, for example, takes the extreme stance of believing that all US citizens should not only have the right to own a gun, but that it should be a requirement whether you want one or not. He has told me and my mother over and over again that it would keep us safer, however we have always disagreed with him on that point. We believe that the opposite extreme, making it so that ONLY members of a well-regulated militia (read: the military and the police) could have them would make us safer, since that would help keep the "crazy" people from getting them in the first place. Letting them have guns because you have one too and "Now it just becomes a matter of who is faster to pull the trigger" would not, in my opinion, be an effective safety strategy. If anything, I believe it would just make this country more dangerous.

As far as the governor's comments, I agree with Katie that he could have been much more tactful about how he phrased his refusal to attend the event. Politicians should know that whenever they make such comments, especially publicly, they are going to be taken out of context and made into a big deal. If rather than saying that they could "kiss my butt" he had said "They failed to meet the conditions I laid out for them to make it possible for me to attend, and therefore I will not be able to attend," it would have come off a lot more diplomatic and made him look far less disrespectful. As Morgan pointed out, the way he phrased it can have the effect of making him look racist, and that is probably not the sort of image he wants to portray in the present political climate. While the First Amendment grants him the right to say whatever he wants, that does not necessarily mean that he should say whatever he wants. He has to remember that his comments are going to be heard by the public and that they can influence the public. Therefore, he should not say anything that he would not want said to him, nor should he say anything that could be deemed as offensive as "kiss my butt".