The Iowa Board Of Regents Are Afraid Of Cops Having Guns

Michael Gartner, gun-hater. Except for cops... but not university cops.

The Iowa Board of Regents kicked the can down the road concerning letting cops at Iowa's major public universities carry guns.

Don't forget that last April the Democrats controlling the Iowa Senate defeated a proposal that would have allowed cops to carry guns.

ISU and UI are the only Big 12 and Big 10 schools whose campus police don't carry guns.

Why are today's Democrats in Iowa so fearful of cops carrying guns? They'll go on and on about how the military needs body armor and all that, but when it comes to letting a campus police officer have the same equipment as the sheriff deputies they have trained side-by-side with at the academy, these Democratic politicians shrivel up into a tiny fetal ball and are unable to answer.

And likely they'll put on their bow ties and trim their beards and then look at this video on YouTube of the student getting manhandled and tasered at the University of Florida yesterday after asking John Kerry if he was in Skulls & Bones with President Bush. Gosh, the dilemma of shutting down free speech versus whether cops should taser people who are exercising their First Amendment rights.



Gee, maybe the Iowa Board of Regents should outlaw everything for campus police. Especially tasers! Maybe even automobiles!

The fact remains that the Board of Regents is fully stacked with far-leftist Democrats and gun-haters like Michael Gartner.

Michael Gartner, of course, is the same fella who, when he was the head of NBC News in the early 1990s, ordered reporter Arthur "The Scud Stud" Kent into a war zone without anything (the following is by author Ken Auletta):

Now reluctantly working for Dateline NBC in Rome, Kent's foreign stories were being butchered and dropped altogether and Kent wanted to know why. In his attempts to find out what was happening, Kent wrote several letters to Don Browne, vice-president of NBC news. He was becoming an ever-present thorn in the side of one of the world's largest corporations.

Fed up with Kent's persistent requests for some justification as to why his stories were being dropped, David Verdi, under the orders of Michael Gartner, assigned Kent and his team to Zagreb and then to move immediately into Bosnia.

It was an extremely dangerous assignment. Twenty-seven journalists had been killed in Bosnia the year before. Kent and his team were sent in without bullet-proof vests and helmets. They were provided with no translators or guides, no first-aid gear, no maps and no background files. Kent refused the assignment. NBC's own policy book stated that all hazardous assignments were purely voluntary. Kent also had a contract with NBC which stated that reassignment from Dateline could only be to the senior Europea n posts at NBC's Nightly News.

He was sent letters from Michael Gartner, threatening him with suspension. Kent was eventually suspended and fired. Gartner wasted no time in launching a publicity campaign claiming that Kent had been suspended for refusing a legitimate and safe assignment-to Zagreb, Croatia with no mention that Kent had been assigned to go into Bosnia.

Kent's case never went to trial, but the book takes on a dramatic turn from the world theatre to the boardrooms of NBC where Kent tells his story through depositions. Here, the various people involved in the Kent vs. NBC case tell their side of the story to the defendant and the plaintiff (and their lawyers) under oath.

If the book up until this point is fascinating, it reaches the realms of the un-put-down-able in these later chapters. In just under 75 pages, the upper management of NBC comes tumbling down. An organization, when called to account for what appeared to be lies, irresponsible decision-making, compromised news reporting and sensationalistic tendencies, simply cannot defend itself. Many of NBC's executives come across as-for lack of a better word-morons. Kent's case seems so strong from the beginning that it is hard to believe his opponents manage to run a network.

David Verdi, who was responsible for assigning Kent and his partner to Bosnia, admits that he doesn't know the Serb capital of Bosnia or the Muslim capital. He also admits that no equipment was available to Kent when he was assigned to go into Bosnia. More digging revealed that, contrary to Gartner's claims in the press release denouncing Kent, there was never an assignment to "peaceful Zagreb." (Ironically, Kent ended up in Bosnia anyway, filming an award-winning documentary sold, in part, to the BBC and CBC.)

From beginning to end, it is clear that Kent is in the right and NBC is terribly, terribly wrong. Kent initially asked for $25 million plus a full apology. The cash settlement Kent received remains confidential, but by the end of the book, Kent achieves three consequential achievements. Not only does he clear his name and show that his dishonourable discharge was based on completely false charges, but he has demonstrated something to which everyone who considers news of some importance should pay close attention: NBC news was (and very well may still be) driven by its entertainment division-as appalling a revelation as can be imagined.

And don't forget Gartner's past thoughts about guns. This is attributed to him via USA Today on January 16, 1992:

There is no reason for anyone in this country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.

Also from the April 1991 issue of Shooting Industry:

Headlined "Tell Me a Good Reason for Handguns," the column began with Gartner declaring, "This is another of those columns about guns. I'm against them.

"I'm especially against handguns..." After spending most of the column citing Handgun Control Inc. statistics and advocating passage of the Brady Bill with its nationwide seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases, Gartner arrived at his real objective when he stated, "That doesn't seem too much too ask (passage of the Brady Bill).

"Indeed, it isn't enough. In fact, only police and soldiers -- and, maybe, licensed target ranges -- should have handguns. No one else needs one."

Yeah, what a dilemma, eh? Cops should have guns, but apparently not university cops.
What a hypocrite Michael Gartner is.