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Since we’re all thinking about guns today…

… here are a few headlines, to get us up to date on guns in America.

IOWA GRANTS PERMISSION FOR BLIND
RESIDENTS TO CARRY GUNS IN PUBLIC

*************************

SLAIN GUN INSTRUCTOR’S FAMILY WANTS LAW
TO BAN CHILDREN FROM AUTOMATIC WEAPONS

(Don’t worry. No chance in hell it’ll pass.)

***************************

AFTER WACO SHOOTOUT,
LAWMAKERS CONTINUE
OPEN CARRY PUSH

(That’ll pass.)

***************************

However.
As Andrew Sullivan used to say:
Know Hope.

It began with the Oct. 24 candidate’s debate at Virginia Tech, the site of the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history. In response to a question, Cuccinelli boasted of his A rating from the NRA.

And then McAuliffe did something surprising: He said he didn’t give a fig about the powerful lobby’s rating. And, oh, by the way, he had earned an F.

McAuliffe won the election.

*******************************

The No Hope position:

[G]uns are tools conceived, built, and used for the primary purpose of killing living things very quickly and with very little effort. They are perfect, and whether men and women and children and babies use them correctly or incorrectly, people get maimed or killed. For this reason, it should be illegal, as it is in most of the world, for most citizens to own guns.

This is apparent to many people, even and especially to many people who sell guns. But it is even more apparent that nothing anyone says or writes about how it is an absolute fucking farce that it is legal for most citizens to own guns matters. Episodes like Roanoke, and Sandy Hook, and Aurora, and Blacksburg, and Charleston affirm that the fight is already lost.

Margaret Soltan, August 26, 2015 8:35PM
Posted in: guns

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
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Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

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Roland Greene, Stanford University

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Carlat Psychiatry Blog

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Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

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Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

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Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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