Letters To The Editor

Thu., April 9, 1998

GUNS

Trigger lock registration needed

How can we stop violent crimes perpetrated by children with guns? We can place the responsibility squarely where it belongs.

If Mr. Golden of Jonesboro, Ark., and all other adult gun owners knew they would stand trial and be prosecuted if their guns were stolen and used in a violent crime, you can bet they would have trigger locks in place and more secure storage.

That’s not likely to happen, so let’s get laws into effect that require registration on trigger locks. Then, children can go back to playground fights which result in black eyes instead of the slaughter of innocence which occurred in Jonesboro and three other small communities in the last six months. Carol Bordeaux Medical Lake

Firearms not the problem

Once again our eyes and ears are inundated with yet another tragedy, this time in Arkansas, involving the cold-blooded murder of our children by our children.

Although I feel appalled by the carnage, I think I’m even more worried by the response of the citizens of this country. Rather than blaming themselves for allowing their children access to bloody video-games and graphically violent television programs, they choose to blame the easy culprits: firearms.

Our problem these days is that we want to generalize situations and fix problems with a cookie-cutter solution. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some. The solution to the gun issue is to have gun-control spearheaded by level-headed and responsible shooters, people who know and are directly affected by such regulations. Anything else will just be temporary, and doomed to both failure and tragedy.

I fear that my voice, however, is but a calm whisper in a room of angry shouts. Today I am a young soldier, sworn to protect and defend this country, but if tomorrow I find that this nation is no longer the one based upon the freedom I was taught to love, I’ll have little choice but to go where I can live in freedom. When you people out there who would give up liberty for safety, stand up to be counted, you’ll not find me among you, because you deserve neither. Free men can possess arms, slaves cannot. Ryan G. Anderson Pullman

Gun control silly solution

The killing of four children and a teacher in Jonesboro, Ark., was tragic, but forget for a moment about the guns they used. What were an 11- and 13-year-old doing with a van? The legal driving age in Arkansas is 14. How did they gain access to a vehicle?

Geneva Pritchard (Letters, April 3) suggests that “a person’s individual rights should end when lives are at stake.” Since it is apparent that kids too young to drive have access to vehicles, why don’t we put tighter controls on vehicles as well? Pritchard is 16. Why don’t we take away her driver’s license until she’s 21, since so many teenagers get into accidents? In fact, since cars can cause more damage than guns and kill several people at once, why don’t we simply ban all cars?

Obviously this is a silly solution, as is gun control. Controlling guns will not solve the deeper problem of learned aggressive behavior. Instead, perhaps we should stop supporting violent TV shows, movies and magazines. Two days before the Arkansas shooting, Pritchard’s peers wrote articles praising “South Park.” The disrespectful, violence-prone kids on that show are younger than the killers in Arkansas. What happened in Jonesboro was sad, but what do we expect in a society that glorifies violence? Sara K. Quigley Pullman

GRASS GROWERS

Farmers should be compensated

The Department of Ecology should have to pay the grass growers for their losses each year until there is a solution to help the farmers raise the same amount they did in the past. It’s no more than fair that Ecology do its part in saving the grass growers. Myrtle L. Melhus Cheney

SPOKANE TOPICS

Give job to second-in-command

Spokane County and the city of Spokane now must consider filling important positions, including chief of police. I strongly feel that the person next in command should be offered the position.

First, it is a way of rewarding a qualified worker, so others down the line will be interested enough to reach the top, and not feel that they are on a dead-end road.

Secondly, I feel that the replacement should be given a monetary pay raise, and not assume what the position now pays. Let them earn it, and prove they are as good as their boss was.

There is no substitute for experience. Bill Pupo has proven that. Let’s keep our jobs for local people.

For a job that pays $86,000 per year you have 26 applicants. If it paid $80,000 you would have the same applicants. Charley Vingo Spokane

GOVERNMENT/POLITICS

Americans losers in Jones case

The dismissal of the Paula Jones lawsuit could hardly be considered a decision where the highest principles of our American system of justice were upheld. There were no winners in this sad culmination of one of the more disgraceful chapters of our history, only losers.

The basis of the dismissal itself - that Jones could not prove that Clinton’s actions towards her had caused her any harm - was contingent upon evidence that her allegations against him were, in fact, true. By this decision, lobbied for by the White House, not only was the plaintiff denied justice, but so too was the president - if he were innocent. But in the final outcome, the American people are the losers because we have been denied the truth.

This administration, skilled in the arts of malfeasance and chicanery, has not only ruthlessly manipulated the entire judicial system, but through spin control, information leaks and innuendo, they have manipulated the press and, subsequently, public opinion. This has resulted in further degradation of our criminal justice system, giving rise to the phenomenon of trial by media, effectively undermining the principle of equal protection under the law.

Many among us would like these unprecedented numbers of allegations of misconduct against this president to just go away. But what about the abuse of power and subversion of justice? Do we learn to live with that, too? If so, all of us will get the government that we deserve, even though many of us unquestionably do not deserve it. Ron Yorke Spokane

Murray against tax cut plan

This past week, the U.S. Senate agreed to some relatively modest reductions in taxes over the next few years and a pledge to use budget surpluses to shore up entitlement programs for the elderly.

The tax cuts are a recognition that it was basically huge tax increases early in this decade that made a balanced budget possible. It’s the right thing to do when you consider taxes are the highest in peacetime history as a percentage of economic growth (GDP). It’s the fair thing to do.

Shoring up Medicare and Social Security means living up to the commitments our government made to us long ago. This is important because people have planned their lives for decades around these commitments. Again, it’s the fair thing to do.

Sen. Patty Murray voted against the plan. In her view, more new spending programs are what this country needs and our country’s most socialist-minded senators, like Ted Kennedy, were opposing this plan right along with her.

Honest, hard-working taxpayers and our elderly, who have paid for their entitlements for decades, are simply not the people Murray cares about as she works to make our government bigger and more intrusive toward our lives. It’s certainly something to remember as she asks us to vote for her next fall. James Howell Liberty Lake

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