Not yet a VCDL member? Join VCDL at: http://www.vcdl.org/join.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
VCDL's meeting schedule: http://www.vcdl.org/meetings.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Reminder: VCDL meeting tonight in Annandale
2. Anti-gun teacher's assignment to her students at Lord Fairfax Community College
***************************************************
1. Reminder: VCDL meeting tonight in Annandale
***************************************************
VCDL is having its monthly membership meeting at the Mason Government Center in Annandale TONIGHT, Thursday, October 20th.
**NOTE: Attorney General Cuccinelli, who was originally going to address the group at this meeting has rescheduled to speak at the next meeting on November 17th. The late notice on this is my fault, not his.**
As with all VCDL membership meetings, this one is open to the public, so bring a friend or neighbor and don't be shy
The meeting will be called to order at 8 PM (fellowship starts at 7:30 PM). At 9:30 the meeting will end and we will head to a local restaurant for continued fellowship.
Directions to the meeting can be found on the VCDL web site:
http://www.vcdl.org/static/meetings.html
***************************************************
2. Anti-gun teacher's assignment to her students at Lord Fairfax Community College
***************************************************
An anti-gun professor at Lord Fairfax Community College, Alaina Cassel, is giving a writing assignment to her PSY 255 (Psychological Aspects of Criminal Behavior) students:
"Write a proposed letter to Attorney General Cuccinelli stating why guns should not be allowed at LFCC and what you would do if everyone on the campus was carrying a loaded gun."
I don't see a connection between the course's title and lobbying for gun control. What does lawful carrying of a firearm have to do with criminal behavior? Why isn't she encouraging lawful carry as a deterrent to criminal behavior?
I do, however, see the potential for those letters to be mailed to the Attorney General, giving the Attorney General the wrong perception of the students' true beliefs.
Alaina Cassel has taken a position on gun control before, a seeming fan of Michael Moore's gun-control propaganda film, "Bowling for Columbine":
http://college.cengage.com/psychology/r ... 21016.html
Student Resources for Psychology
Psych on the Screen
Bowling for Columbine: A Documentary on the Making of Two Killers
By Elaine Cassel
Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine explores the origins of violence in Columbine High School killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Moore, the quirky filmmaker whose movies are referred to as pseudo-documentaries (because they blend reportorial and staged sequences), explores the origins of the special kind of home-grown violence that, in 2000, led Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to arm themselves with firearms and kill thirteen people in Columbine High School in a Denver, Colorado suburb before they killed themselves.
Bowling for Columbine’s main purpose is to explore the gun culture in the United States. America’s love affair with the gun has been much documented by sociologists. Psychologists write about the role of guns in triggering violence, when combined with risk factors such as youth, anger, and alcohol. Moore reports on the role of the National Rifle Association, one of the most vociferous and wealthy lobbying organizations in the United States, who lobby against virtually any control on gun access and use. Moore interviews NRA spokesman and macho American hero, Charlton Heston, who says that the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which refers to the rights of citizens to bear arms), is more important than the first amendment (which embodies the rights of freedom of speech, religion, and association).
More than half of all homes in the United States have at least one firearm, but, Moore discovers, Canadians actually have more guns per capita than do Americans. So why are there so many more deaths in the U.S.? Moore suggests, by interviewing Americans, that we are a fearful country, obsessed with gated communities and locked doors. Statistics, however, indicate that having guns in the home creates a higher risk that the inhabitants will be injured or killed by the very gun they bought for protection, at the hands of an intruder, acquaintance, or family member (either accidentally or on purpose).
Long ago, Albert Bandura’s famous "Bobo" doll experiment found that children learned aggression from watching models behave aggressively. Moore reports on the murder of a first-grade student in a Michigan classroom by a boy who brought a gun from home, pointing it at the child and pulling the trigger as he had no doubt seen done at home by his father, who was a known drug dealer.
America has the laxest gun laws of any Western country. Laws in most states protect the rights of citizens to defend themselves and their property with violence. In America, law enforcement officers are taught to shoot to kill, not to maim. We are a country built on gunpowder—massacres of Native Americans and their livestock were possible through gun power.
The NRA says that "guns don’t kill people, people do." But people learn to kill with guns through the processes of operant and social conditioning. Bowling for Columbine depicts what sociologists, social psychologists, and criminologists have known for years. Gun violence in the United States is an epidemic, with no end in sight. Guns are a way of life—and death—in the USA.
Elaine Cassel, Marymount University and Lord Fairfax Community College
---
Professor Cassel is certainly entitled to her (misguided) opinion on gun control, but I don't like how she is cramming it down her student's throats under the guise of a "criminal behavior" class and in a way that the student's work could end up being used for her political purposes.
-------------------------------------------
***************************************************************************
VA-ALERT is a project of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
(VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization
dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to
Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.
VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org [http://www.vcdl.org/]
***************************************************************************
