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Green phones could assist Canada's aging population

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Peak Web
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WEB-cellphone-Mark Burnham

An SFU computer science team is working to redesign smartphones to support more advanced applications

By Amara Janssens
Photos by Mark Burham

Alexandra Fedorova, an associate professor in Computing science, along with her team have been awarded $442,000 over the next three years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to help lead the way in smartphone development. According to Fedorova’s proposal, smart phones are becoming increasingly available to the world, “with over one billion users projected by 2013.” She has observed that mobile technology is becoming very powerful and could have larger societal benefits.

Fedorova’s team has recognized that the use of smartphones in the health care sector could reduce costs, as the phones could be used to automate certain tasks that employees would otherwise conduct.

“The advantage of this device is it can do a lot of things, like measure your heart rate, or detect if you’re falling, if you’re unstable, if you’re off balance, it can help you navigate,” Fedorova stated, “and it’s with you all the time.” Having smartphones with highly sensitive applications for health care providers could help navigate patient’s homes, and automatically take records.

In order for these applications to work in this capacity, smartphones need to be operational for 24 hours a day, not the nine hours at best they last today. To combat this challenge, her team will study where smartphones are expending their power and energy. “The main culprits right now are radio, wifi, or cellular radio, and cpu and screen,” Fedorova described. “We want to understand how to manage these components better so they don’t use as much energy as they are using now.”

Fedorova further explained that the algorithms that decide when an application can “go in a low power state” are not very well tuned. It proves challenging for her team to finely tune these algorithms, as certain applications need to stay on longer than others. According to Fedorova, the algorithms would need to be “very dynamic,” and must allow for the “cooperation between the system and the application.”

Another area of development her team will research with the grant is how to allow for “fall detection algorithms” into smartphones. This would help Canada’s aging population who are most likely to fall. These fall detection algorithms would use the phone’s accelerometer to perceive if the user has or is falling. The phone could then automatically call for emergency or medical services to assist. However, this would require reworking the current systems used in smartphones, to detect slight accelorometer variations.

Through the redesigning of the system, a myriad of potential health care applications could be developed. “We are not designing the applications, we are more interested in redesigning the system to work well for those applications,” Fedorova explained.

University Briefs – Feb. 25, 2013

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Peak Web
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University of Regina to designate 10 gender-neutral washrooms

After two years, UR Pride has successfully campaigned to have gender-neutral washrooms assigned across the campus. “The premise of the washrooms would be that anyone, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation … has access to this space,” Leah Kesier, executive director of UR Pride told The Carillon. UR Pride noted that harassment often occurs in washrooms for those who aren’t filling society’s “gender expectations.” The official launch day has not yet been announced, but UR pride has been working closely with the University of Regina.

With files from The Carillon

Education program applicants drops at UWindsor

In Jan. 2013, the University of Windsor reported a drop of 13 per cent in the number of applicants to the education program compared to 2012. The university noted this as part of a current downward trend in the number of students pursuing education as a career in Ontario. Geri Salinitri, the acting dean of UWindsor’s Faculty of Education, stated that there are more people graduating from teaching programs than teaching positions available in the province of Ontario. Many graduates who are hired often work part-time for six years or more before receiving a permanent position. This has led to many pursuing teaching jobs in other provinces where wages are much higher. UWindsor has extended the fall 2013 education program admission deadline to Mar. 11, 2013.

With files from The Lance

McMaster University and librarian being sued for $3.5 million

The publishing company Edwin Mellen Press is suing McMaster University, along with a librarian, for libel damages. In 2010, the librarian, Dale Askey, wrote a series of blog posts criticizing Edwin Mellen Press as being unprofessional, and questioned the quality of their publications. In June 2012, the publishing company filed legal action against Askey as well as McMaster University as a co-defendant and demanded the posts be taken down. McMaster, however, fully supports their librarian and his posts.

With files from The Silhouette

SFU discusses BC Budget Day

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Peak Web
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WEB-SFU public square-Alison Roach

A new SFU Public Square series looks at propserity in BC

By Alison Roach
Photos by Alison Roach

Last Tuesday was BC Budget Day, the day of the budget lockup in Victoria where Finance Minister Michael de Jong delivered and explained the provincial government’s planned balanced budget for the next three years. In attendance at the lockup was Jock Finlayson, the executive vice president and chief policy officer at the Business Council of BC, an organization that represents 250 large- and medium-sized BC companies. However, after leaving Victoria, Finlayson made his way to SFU Harbour Centre, where he served as the keynote speaker at the first event in a series of three entitled the BC Population ProsperityInitiative (BCPPI) Spring Dialogue Series, presented by SFU Public Square.

The theme of the Tuesday night event was right in line with the events of the day: “From Good to Great, Nurturing Small Business Growth in BC.” Both Finlayson and Nancy Olewiler, the director of the School of Public Policy at SFU, spoke about the current climate for business in BC, and the difficulty facing small business owners in turning their small companies into large ones. Finlayson pointed out that the amount of small businesses in BC is far above the national average, with a disproportionately large number of British Columbians counting themselves as self-employed, one-person businesses. Fiftyfive per cent of BC businesses have fewer than five employees. However, this translates into a larger amount of low income people, a problem in an area like Vancouver where affordability is an issue.

“The public has great affection for small businesses,” said Finlayson in his presentation. “Sometime it seems that our governments would prefer to keep them small.”

Finlayson’s remarks centred around the importance of creating a climate that allows these small businesses to grow into medium-sized, or even large companies, and changes in policy that could stimulate innovation, creativity, and business growth. “Adopting a tax structure that rewards success and encourages companies to grow is also critical,” he stated.

Olewiler acted as the discussant for the evening, alternately agreeing and disagreeing with Finlayson’s claims. She emphasized the importance of making BC a more attractive place to start a business by lowering the tax rates, arguing that the influx of people moving to BC would widen the tax base, and result in higher tax revenues.

She also called attention to what she considers the worst tax decision recently made, the deharmonization of the HST. The return of the PST, according to Olewiler, will actually put more tax on product components for businesses, rendering production costs much higher than can be found elsewhere in the country. Olewiler concluded, “Incentives to be in BC go down.”

After the speakers finished their comments there was a brief Q&A period, followed by half an hour of public dialogue, where attendees worked in small groups to discuss the ideas laid out in the presentations. With a facilitator and note-taker at each table, the results of this dialogue will be posted on the BCPPI and SFU Public Square websites for those interested.

Two more BCPPI Dialogue events are scheduled. One held on March 26 will discuss Aboriginal education needs, and the final one on April 23 will focus on community engagement. All the dialogues are held at SFU Harbour Centre, and require registration.

Shauna Sylvester, the executive director of SFU Public Square, said of the dialogue driven event, “The SFU Public Square is a signature initiative of our community engagement . . . and we always say that it’s only as good as the people who get involved.”

Campaign calls on SFU to become first living wage university

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Peak Web
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WEB-living wage-Vaikunthe Banerjee

The Living Wage campaign celebrated its launch last Wednesday

By Suyesha Sthapit
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

Last Wednesday, the Living Wage SFU Campaign formally launched with an open event in the West Mall Complex Atrium. The event was attended by approximately 45 faculty members, students, and community members. The Graduate Student Society, SFPIRG, and local unions CUPE 3338, the BCGEU, and the TSSU support the campaign.

SFU’s Living Wage Campaign is a project that aims to ensure that every individual employed directly or indirectly by SFU is guaranteed a living wage. This is the amount of money two people working full time (35 hours per week) need to earn per hour to support a family of four. Presenters at the launch of the campaign included distinguished alumnus Mae Burrows, SFU professor Dr. Marjorie Griffin-Cohen, Living Wage for Families campaign organizer Michael McCarthy-Flynn, and CUPE 3338 business agent John Bannister. The launch event highlighted the findings of a study the campaign had undertaken which focused on the working conditions for the lowest paid workers at SFU.

For Metro Vancouver, the living wage has been calculated to be $19.14 per hour for 2012. This does not include things like home ownership, saving for retirement, a savings cushion, the cost of a holiday, or the cost of caring for someone disabled or severely ill.

A living wage at SFU would increase wages for research assistants, child care workers, food service workers, and janitorial staff. McCarthy-Flynn reminded the audience that “These people are all around us but they are invisible. We are working to make them visible.”

According to the campaign, low wages are one of the key reasons for child poverty in BC; 48 per cent of children living in poverty in BC live in families with at least one adult working full-time. According to political science professor Dr. Marjorie Griffin-Cohen, “No parents working full-time, full-year jobs should have to choose between rent or childcare, food or healthcare.” SFU’s Living Wage Campaign is calling on SFU to implement a Living Wage clause in all its new contracts for employment as well as in its tenders to external subcontractors, in order to lift its low-wage workers out of poverty.

The research conducted among SFU’s low-wage workers found that 73 per cent earned less than a living wage, 57 per cent did not get paid for their overtime hours, and only half had benefits included in their employment. According to one of the workers surveyed, “I feel like I can’t provide for my family. I have to struggle to pay for food, housing, electricity and food bills. Sometimes I have to go to the food bank for food.” Another said, “I literally live paycheck to paycheck and budget my finances to only meet bare necessities.”

Cohen stated, “BC has one of the highest poverty rates and child poverty rates compared to other provinces in Canada,” and that the women were particularly affected, earning $2,700 per year less than the Canadian average. Bannister highlighted that one of the major concerns of
the campaign is SFU’s current practice of subcontracting to external companies to provide cheap labour. McCarthy-Flynn explained the reasons why has the campaign chose SFU to become the first living wage university: namely the audience of SFU’s status as one of the best employers in BC and in Canada; its vision to become an engaged, progressive university, its commitment to fair trade products, and its role as a leader in education, innovation and social change.

According to McCarthy-Flynn, “We have taken the university at its word that it wants to achieve these things and the Living Wage sits at the heart of all these concerns.” Many of the top American universities, including all of the Ivy League institutions, have become living wage employers.

Among the several questions that were brought up during the event, one was how much becoming a living wage university would cost. Flynn admitted that the campaign isn’t sure of an exact amount, but he extending an invitation to the university to explore this question as a community.

He stated that several other institutions found that the actual amount was surprisingly low. For example, it cost the City of New Westminster only 0.25 per cent of their annual budget to become a Living Wage employer. The university administration has received the SFU Living Wage Campaign’s research report, which representatives stated they are looking into and will comment on soon.

COLUMN: Godwin's law, meet Onderwater's law

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Peak Web
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By Eric Onderwater

Disagreeing with public opinion doesn’t make someone racist

In the public debate of today, most people have come to a common understanding of certain things. Left or right, intelligent or stupid, many people choose to abide by certain conventions when they debate and discuss opinions and ideas.

For example, it is a common convention to define the terms (words, expressions) of a debate. It is also a common convention while debating to argue about the ideas that are in play, instead of attacking the people who agree with certain ideas. Just because someone is wrong does not imply that they’re a complete idiot, or vice versa.

Another, less-known convention is found in disciplines such as political science and history. This convention refers to the so-called “Hitler Argument” based on Godwin’s Law. It goes as follows: whoever refers to Hitler and the Nazis first in a debate automatically loses the debate.

Why? Well, because comparing a set of ideas (or a person) to the Nazis is almost always intellectually cheap. It so quickly becomes an ad hominem attack, directed at people instead of ideas. Too often it is simply an emotional deflection, or an appeal to paranoia, rather than a careful argument of logic and facts.

Today I propose another rule of debate or common social convention in response to multiple articles published in The Peak over the last month. One article, published Feb. 3, alleged that all opponents of the “Idle No More” protests were “racists.” Another article, published Feb. 17, alleged that all those who oppose the continued status quo of government handouts to Aboriginals in Canada were “best friends with a concept [called] racism.”

It is unfortunate that both of these authors feel the need to resort to accusations like racism to push their particular views. It should be universally acknowledged that the status of Aboriginals in Canada is one of the most important debates in Canada today. Both writers have valuable things to say, and important opinions to contribute.

But neither author is correct in smearing opponents of their views as “racists.” While it is certainly possible that a number of their opponents may actually be racist, it is highly unlikely that the vast
majority of their opponents are. Opposing government handouts to native Canadians does not make you racist. Neither does opposing “Idle no more.”

So, let me propose a new social convention, in order to regulate debate. It goes like this: the person who first calls his/her opponent racist instantly loses the debate. Why? This is due to the same reason cited for the “Nazi” rule. “Racist,” at least in Canada, is too often used as an insult or epithet, instead of as an argument. Stop calling people names and please start debating their arguments. It is insulting when someone decides to smear your name instead of properly interacting with your ideas. Too many people think that they have license to smear their opponents as “racists.”

If you want to call someone a racist, how about doing your homework before you do, just to make sure? Otherwise it’s just cheap rhetoric, and I’m getting a little tired of it.

Getting hit in the nuts fucking hurts

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Peak Web
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the peak nuts

Just saying what everyone should already know, but doesn’t

I take it you’ve noticed the headline. But before I start, I have to share an anecdote to give the appropriate context. Last Friday, I was riding the skytrain with a friend when she slapped me for making an inappropriate joke about certain races and their proclivities. While the slap was not particularly hard, she asked if it had hurt. When I said no, she berated
another male colleague of ours for losing his shit when she had previously punched him in the balls with the same measure of force.

At which point I lost my shit. I mean up until that point, I’d thought everyone knew that getting struck in the testicular region fucking hurts. But apparently to a certain penisless population percentage (about 50 per cent) that fact might not be as clear as I’d like it to be.

I’ll start by saying getting hit in the nuts probably isn’t the worst pain; it might not even be the worst thing out there. I’ve never been sucked into an airplane turbine, but my guess is it’s probably worse than a swift kick to the old boys. This way we don’t have reopen the “which hurts more” debate: childbirth, or a knee in the family jewel. The reason for that is because pain lacks quantifiability. Without empirical pain units (which I’ve termed Godfuckingdammitwatts) we can’t compare pain
between two different events or people. Not to mention that emotional pain is a whole different can of worms. So that argument will remain closed.

Anyway, when you get hit below the belt, you don’t feel it at first. When you flick someone in the nose, they feel it immediately. You get flicked in the beanbag, you might have 10 to 15 seconds before the pain hits. This time is reserved for you to comprehend all the poor life choices that have lead up to this moment. Maybe you shouldn’t have been standing over that teeter-totter. Perhaps there were safer things to grind down than a hand rail. Hanging that pinata at waist level, not your best idea.

But in this trepidation, there’s also hope. The faint hope that you didn’t in fact get hit in the twigs and berries. Maybe it was just a graze, or maybe your thigh got mos — OH GOD, NOPE. FULL-ON HIT. YEP. THE EGGS ARE SCRAMBLED. GOING DOWN.

As for the pain, it’s what scientists call “referred pain,” similar to the pain in your left arm resulting from a cardiac episode. It hurts, but not where the injury actually occurred. In this case the pain permeates your whole torso, making it feel like someone is swapping around your organs. It’s seven or eight body blows, it’s thunder, it’s an elephant sitting on your chest. Nausea and loss of breath and vision are possible symptoms, depending on the amount of force.

Immediately after contact is made, you might have noticed in every YouTube video of someone injuring their wedding tackle, the owner of said tackle hunches over and Quasimodos it. This is an evolutionary reflex. Your body is trying to protect your nethers from whatever the hell just happened.

This evolved because back in the time of dinosaur vacuum cleaners, selective pressures were such that protecting your junk is more important than your ability to defend yourself from, say, velociraptors. Women reading this article, now you know: getting hit in the nuts really does hurt that much. Men reading this article, you may now return to your full upright positions.

Core values do not make a government

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Peak Web
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the peak core values illustration

Principles are a much more valuable means of holding parties accountable

By Brandon Taylr (University of British Columbia Okanagan)
Illustration by Ben Buckley

Mohammed Sheriffdeen’s Feb. 18 article, “What are ‘values’ anyway?” asks perhaps the most contentious question in modern politics.

Values are the foundation upon which entire representative bodies are built. The Conservative Party of Canada values small government and the continuation of the status quo for the sake of societal stability. The Liberal Party favors a balanced government that is meant to free the middle class from intrusion, thus empowering them to succeed and create a prosperous nation. The NDP want to socialize certain institutions to maintain their public integrity and balance the playing field for the economy. That’s what the big three parties want, but it is not necessarily what they end up delivering.

The Conservative Party of Canada’s back-office spending has increased by eight per cent, to the tune of $5.3 billion, while cutting “front-line” services that actually benefit Canadians. Countless lawyers, judges, and police officers have highly criticized the removal of vital funds from the federal prison system, meant to rehabilitate prisoners and decrease recidivism. Each move they have made is meant to placate their core voter base. Conservative values are seen in the short-term, where they can point to manageable and incremental change to appear like they are moving forward with their party’s stated agenda. The Chinese National Offshore Oil Company takeover, imported and federally subsidized labor, as well as their nearly tyrannical omnibus budget bills, have all challenged the foundational merit of Canada.

The Liberal Party of Canada is newly revitalized with a strong leadership race. Justin Trudeau has made the empowerment of the middle class his top priority. Despite growing up as part of a dynastic Canadian family, he has modeled himself as a class warrior, out to preserve the driving force of the Canadian economy: the single-home family. However, he has provided no details on how he will tailor policy to answer these claims. It is, again, a more rhetorical than pragmatic response to the needs of Canadians.

The New Democratic Party of Canada has similar issues now that they have lost Jack Layton to champion their cause. They have responded to waning poll results — likely due to the rise of Trudeau — by criticizing the pro-business agenda of the Conservative Party. If the NDP were to rise to power and business was not entirely stifled by tax increases and a laissezfaire foreign policy, the rise of organized labor will threaten the stability of the working class jobs currently available in Canada.

Politics in Canada have become the local strip mall. Each party has its own storefront with catchy colours and slogans on the front window, but their stated values are in no way indicative of their actual policy.

We have to be more critical and skeptical of our government to evoke any real change beyond the incremental tediousness that Harper’s Conservatives have offered. They have maintained a stable economy in trying times and, right now, that’s all people really care about. But, as the world economy
continues to move forward, so must we. If nondescript values are our calling card, we stand to lose our identity entirely. Instead of asking for values, which Sheriffdeen mentioned are highly fluid, we need to start asking for principles.

If we continue to chastise the government for not having consistent values, we have entered a war of prominent ideologies. Principles, which are not fluid, need to guide the policy of a party. Let us make Canada a nation of principles, not values, and face the world with pragmatism and problem solving in mind, instead of playing to the voter base for the sake of the next election.

The Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP could stand to learn a few things when it comes to the ideals of governance, and should realize that values are meaningless without core principles to guide them.

French, Canadians, do you speak it?

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Peak Web
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WEB-vk jackson-mark burnham

If you don’t live in Quebec, probably not, nor should you have to

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Mark Burnham

Memo to the Parti Quebecois: Bill-14 can reduce English-speaking Quebecers’ rights all it wants; it’s not going to add legitimacy to a language that, outside of Quebec, is virtually useless, nor is pandering to French speakers in a non-french speaking province going to help out your political party.

The bill seeks to increase French use in Quebec, and if enacted, would remove the bilingual status of some townships. If more than half of their residents speak French primarily, it will stop being a bilingual area and all services must be offered in French, forcing local workers to either brush up their French skills or lose their jobs.

However unfortunate this is for English-speakers in these smaller areas, Quebecers have a legal right to their language, and this bill would simply reinforce what was established in the British North America Act 1886 and the Charter in 1982. But what about languages in the rest of Canada?

French as a second language is virtually useless in most areas of Canada. It might look cool on a resume, and is required for a Government job, but that’s where its mystique ends. Universities outside of Quebec only require a language (that’s any language, including sign language) at a Grade 11 level to qualify for admittance. Unless you live in Quebec, the only province where French speakers outnumber English speakers, you will be fine with just English and your grade 11 level of Deutsch-sprecken.

According to 2001 census data, English and French are the predominantly spoken languages in Canada, with English spoken by 21 million and French spoken by seven million. Chinese languages follow in third place at 855, 000. But this isn’t necessarily indicative of Canada as whole; Quebec’s French-speaking rates skew the nation’s overall statistic.

If you remove Quebec from the 2001 equation, French speakers would only outnumbered Chinese speakers by about 100, 000. West of Manitoba, Canadians are more likely to speak Chinese than French. It’s not surprising, then, that businesses are looking for employees that speak languages other than English or French, especially in BC, where both Chinese and Punjabi speakers outnumber French speakers 6–1 and 5–2 respectively.

Thomas Mulcair recently used Vancouver’s Chinese New Year parade as a platform to decry businesses “requiring a language other than French or English” as a qualification. This pro-French pandering is unsurprising, considering the NDP’s gain in seats is largely because of Quebec’s support in the last election. While the larger implications of this requirement may hint towards unethical business practices in some cases, looking for employees who speak a language other than French or English makes sense, demographically speaking. When I worked at a bank, I only used my grade 12 French skills once to help a Quebecer on vacation with her Visa. Punjabi and Chinese got used constantly however. When I applied originally, I got passed over twice because I couldn’t speak Punjabi, Hindi, Mandarin or Cantonese, despite the fact that I knew two people in managerial positions.

A day into the job, I understood why having Punjabi or Chinese as a second language wasn’t just valuable, but necessary: I couldn’t help a large portion of the clients because I couldn’t communicate with them. Days where only two people with a non-French second language were working meant a long line up and people eventually getting impatient and deciding to take their chances yelling frustrated requests at me in languages I didn’t understand. No amount of French was going to help.

Quebecers have every right to maintain their cultural identity, and if Bill 14 helps them maintain a shared sense of culture rather than put people in small communities in a compromising situation, fine. Have your Royale with cheese and Bill 14.

However, as we gear up for election season, it would be nice if politicians would commit to resolving real issues, like questionable hiring practices and safe working conditions, instead of using them as a platform to pander for votes.

Africentric curriculum can't teach every black history

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Peak Web
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the peak black history

Canada’s black history is very different from America’s

By Atta Almasi
Photos by Enokson/Flickr

EDMONTON (CUP) — Eighteen years after the House of Commons officially recognized the creation of Black History Month in Canada, the debate still continues among educators, students, parents and the general public about the effectiveness and relevance of the continued February celebration.

Two recently-opened Africentric schools, which are publicly funded, profess to integrate “the diverse perspectives, experiences and histories of people of African descent into the provincial-mandated curriculum.” Some see them as a reasonable attempt to teach children of cultural contributions year-round, but there are better alternatives to accomplish these goals.

First off, the initiative doesn’t come from within Canada. It’s adopted from America, where the reality is that there are more young, black men in prison than enrolled in post-secondary education. The problem with adopting this educational approach from the United States is the failure of the Toronto District School Board administrators to recognize and acknowledge the relative differences between the black population in Canada and the black population in the States.

African-Americans are a relatively homogenous group as the vast majority descended from slaves brought to America hundreds of years ago, while black Canadians are a diverse group that, apart from long-standing established black communities in places such as Nova Scotia, are relatively recent immigrants. They arrive here from places such as Barbados and Botswana.

And unlike African-Americans, black Canadians make up a much smaller portion of the wider populace of the country. Furthermore, African culture and history are so diverse that it is difficult to teach them. Inferring that there is a singular “Africentric” perspective is both ignorant and ludicrous: there are the Arabs living in Egypt and Sudan; the Chinese, South Asian and Portuguese diasporas residing in countries such as Mauritius, Tanzania and Angola; the many different linguistic and cultural groups that make up the majority of sub-Saharan Africa — too many to categorize in one paragraph, let alone one perspective.

Instead of promoting Africentric schools, we should encourage the contributions of African Canadians to Canadian history, arts and culture, politics, business and other respective fields through a non-Africentric curriculum. The goal of increasing “high self-pride” and better integration into Canadian society can be better and more effectively achieved if we shift away from the dominant African-American history and civil rights during Black History Month.

Gun bans aren't the answer

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Peak Web
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WEB-3D printer-Mark Burnham

With 300 million guns in the United States alone, how could a ban prevent tragedies?

By Michael Jarosz
Photos by Mark Burnham

The tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut is the latest shooting spree in America. Many citizens and politicians are finally saying enough is enough. But what is the most effective way of bringing about this change? Obama has proposed an assault weapons ban, while the National Rifle Association (NRA) has proposed armed security guards in every school. If you are Canadian, chances are you agree with Obama’s stance and
you think the NRA is crazy. But if you think about it rationally, setting politics aside, the NRA’s position has a lot of merit. Let’s start with something we can all relate to: SFU. What if a madman would target our
school just like in Newtown, or Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal? While Canada already has quite strict gun control laws, it is still possible to legally acquire many types of guns and illegally get hold of many others.

So who is there to protect us? Our school has 24/7 security, but would that be of much help? It turns out that security guards in Canada are not allowed to carry firearms outside of their own home. The only exception is if they transport money in those heavily armored vehicles. That’s right: the safety of money is more important than the safety of students and citizens.

Security guards at universities are just as helpless as students when it comes to gun crime. What good is it to arm only the police when everyone is already dead by the time they show up? The idea of schools being “gun-free zones” with unarmed security guards makes about as much sense as declaring a building to be a “no fire zone” and then removing all the sprinklers and fire extinguishers.

The other option, a ban on gun sales, is nothing more than a feel-good idea with little grounding in reality. First, there are already over 300 million guns in the United States alone. A gun ban isn’t going to make them magically disappear. Second, prohibition doesn’t work; you need look
no further than alcohol prohibition in the 1920s or the drug wars of today for affirmation.

Want a more relevant example? During World War Two, German forces couldn’t prevent the Polish resistance movement (comprised largely of civilians)
from arming itself. The Poles designed and produced an inexpensive, home-made machine pistol that could be made in small workshops by inexperienced
engineers. Almost 70 years later, you don’t think people could do the same? And even by today’s standards, it’s about to get a whole lot easier.

One of the hottest new industries right now is 3D printing, a technology set to revolutionize small-scale manufacturing. Gun components have already been printed and assembled into an AR-15, the same weapon as was used in Newtown. The parts were assembled and fired six times before failure; not bad for a $2,000 machine, and on the first try. What this means is that access to guns and ammunition for the common civilian may become as easy as printing off a downloaded file you got from eBay. Good luck imposing a ban on guns in such a world.

Having said all this, I do support reasonable levels of gun control, like age limits, cooling off periods, background checks, mental health checks, and even pharmaceutical checks. But the reality is that gun control alone isn’t going to cut it, especially if we look at the technology that will be available to us in the future.

With this in mind, the NRA’s proposal makes a lot of sense. Because when you really think about it, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024

Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us:
[email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024