Wading In

Find common ground on gun control By Kelvin Wade January 26, 2011 5:27PM We've had 11 police officers shot in the U.S. this week in a 24-hour period. Fourteen officers killed this month, the same as January 2010, and the month isn't over. Locally, just last week, a convicted felon was arrested for attempted murder and being in possession of a loaded firearm. Another ex-con allegedly held his wife at gunpoint. Last Saturday, Fairfield police engaged in a foot chase with a suspect who was seen with a gun. How do we keep guns out of the hands of criminals? If gun owners can accept reasonable restrictions and gun control advocates understand the limits of new laws, we can make some progress. Unfortunately, even in light of the Tucson, Ariz., shootings, not much serious debate is going on about this issue. Gun enthusiasts' debate-killing arguments go something like this: 'If we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.' 'Guns don't kill people. People kill people...

A strange way to mark MLK birthday By Kelvin Wade January 20, 2011 In November 2010, near the anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy, Daily Republic columnist Bud Stevenson wrote a column blasting JFK for his affairs. He attacked Joseph Kennedy and then moved on to Bobby and Ted. He even saved room for a dig at Ted Kennedy's son. Reading it, I couldn't surmise the point of trashing a man's family on the anniversary of his murder. In light of that, it didn't really surprise me that Stevenson decided to 'celebrate' Martin Luther King Jr. Day this week by pointing out that King had affairs. You can pretty much guarantee that if Stevenson is writing about MLK, it's going to be about his adultery or plagiarism, certainly not any of the speeches, marches and actions that led to this great American patriot having a national holiday. From there Stevenson revisited the Kennedy brothers' sex lives. Then he clumsily attempts to make the column abou...

America's brand of terrorism By Kelvin Wade January 13, 2011 Last weekend's shootings in Pima County, Ariz., have sparked a firestorm of debate on the vitriolic political discourse in this country. Republicans have accused Democrats of exploiting a tragedy for political purposes. The accusation is amusing coming from them: 9/11, anyone? But in the back and forth over the political climate and the inevitable focus on gun control, the one truly frightening thing is the relative commonness of this kind of attack. While we're succumbing to enhanced pat downs to thwart airborne terrorist attacks, America's most popular, homegrown terrorist attack, the mass shooting, goes on unchecked. Forgotten now, but it was just 48 hours before the Arizona shooting that a teen in Omaha, Neb., killed his assistant principal, wounded his principal and killed himself. Rep. Peter King, R-NY, has proposed legislation that would bar anyone from knowingly carrying a gun within 1,000 feet of a f...

Leave the whitewashing to Tom Sawyer By Kelvin Wade January 06, 2011 In my short story class at Armijo, my teacher, Mr. Kenny, read the Thomas Wolfe short story, 'The Child by Tiger' to the class. In it, a seemingly docile, deeply religious black man in a small Southern town in the 1920s goes on a shooting spree. The whites in the story referred to the man as a 'crazy n----' from 'N-----town.' I thought of that story when I heard that Newsouth Books is releasing a version of the Mark Twain classic 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' with all references to the N word changed to 'slave.' A pejorative term for Native American has also been changed. When I heard this I was outraged. There are many great works that deal with difficult subject matter and use colorful language in the telling of their stories. Why should any publisher substitute their judgment for the original author's? Why kneel before the god of political correctness? Auburn Unive...