On any important but controversial topic, there’s bound to be some debate. Guns and gun control is an important topic, and since it’s also a controversial topic, you know there’s going to be debate surrounding proposals of any stripe. As such, some parties want to facilitate that debate.

Other parties, however, want to look like they’re facilitating debate while actually giving a soapbox to just one side.

A prime example of that is the University of Connecticut. They hosted a panel on the Second Amendment recently.

Note the parties invited. Not a single one represents a pro-gun point of view. Not a soul.

This is how the facilitate debate on the topic? Further, the media doesn’t call them on it, either. They enable them to continue selling the lie that what a panel of anti-gun activists have to say is all that needs to be said on a constitutionally-protected right that they’re trying to take away from people.

An attorney pushing a lawsuit against a company that did nothing illegal, a devoted anti-gun senator, someone from an anti-gun group, and a woman who blames guns for her failure to teach her child not to mess with other people’s belongings. These are the people they put on a panel to discuss your rights.

What do you want to bet that they didn’t even present a valid pro-gun argument between them, even for the sake of argument?

I know, sucker’s bet.

That’s the problem, though. They get away with this stuff because so few people are willing to call them on it. I mean, I get that it’s Connecticut, but I’ve got a couple of friends from there. Pro-gun people exist in the state. They just were too lazy to bring them in.

The panel was nothing more than a panel on gun control. That’s it. That’s all it was. It wasn’t even an attempt at presenting both sides of the argument. They wanted to preach about the evils of guns, all while failing to acknowledge any of the real facts.

Karen Song, for example, is great for that because a mother’s grief tends to be very visceral. It hits people right in the gut. However, what real expertise does she have other than losing a child? A panel on how to deal with grief might be one thing, but on gun control and the Second Amendment, she has little to offer.

To me, the biggest problem is that UConn gets federal tax dollars. That means they’re funded not just by anti-gunners in Connecticut, but also by people in pro-gun states such as myself. That means the student group used their funding–at least part of which comes from you and me–to host something like this and offer nothing approaching a balanced approach.

And I bet they wonder why so many people on the right think of college campuses as hostile environments. Between that and what happened at Ohio State University, the real wonder is that any of us send our kids to college.