Letters To The Editor

FIREARMS

Measures needed but not gun curbs

Well, it’s happened again! A couple of deranged kids charged into a school and started shooting everyone in sight. These boys belonged to a hate group and had displayed hostile behavior long before this incident. Yet they weren’t taken seriously. That’s been the problem with all of the school shootings. Loners and oddballs are ignored or mistreated, allowing their hostility to build until it bursts into violence.

The gun control people are screaming guns are the problem. Get real, people. Those guns didn’t walk into that school and start shooting by themselves. They were in the hands of enraged young men who broke every gun law and school gun policy to carry out their carnage. How can more gun laws stop people who are bent on breaking the laws? Why must every honest, law-abiding citizen be penalized for the actions of a tiny minority of lawless killers?

The way to prevent these tragedies is to train all school personnel, administrators to janitors, to watch for any suspicious or unusual actions of students. Outlaw all gang activity, in school and out. Tell students to listen to angry students and report all threatening words they hear. They should not ignore this anger by saying the person really didn’t mean what they said. Obviously and tragically, some do mean what they say.

More gun laws won’t stop these tragedies. We need to start profiling problem students and help them before it’s too late for them. William Bittner Spokane

Damaged kids are the problem

The Littleton tragedy was horrible. I love children but it makes me mad to think we must ban guns. My children were brought up hunting and respecting people and guns.

Children today will find a way to kill because of our society and TV. Blame yourself for not talking and listening to your children. So many parents work two jobs and the kids are in so many activities, they don’t leave time for loving them.

I don’t believe in assault weapons and will be the first to sign up to banish them. But people need to take the most blame. Sheldeen Solverson Nine Mile Falls

Signs of mindless times, all right

Anyone who suggests more gun laws are the answer to this problem is intellectually lazy. It would be instructive for one of your intrepid investigative reporters to tally all the laws broken in this rampage. I bet there are at least 15, starting with homicide being a felony.

The signs around schools proclaiming a “drug free and gun free zone” didn’t help in this case, did they? In Nanaimo, British Columbia, there are signs at the entrance to town proclaiming a “nuclear free zone,” and they have worked. There has not been a nuclear explosion in Nanaimo since they put up the signs.

Good hunting. Dick M. Bond Spokane

Where do you stop taking away?

I am sick and tired of hearing cries for gun control as a result of the Littleton, Colo., tragedy. Let’s be realistic. Look at what was involved: propane tanks, pipe bombs, guns, knives, cars to drive the perpetrators to school, Internet access and who knows what else. So, do we outlaw the sale of knives, pipe, propane tanks, remove cars from public access and take away right of entry to Internet?

Face it, the inanimate objects were not to blame for the massacre. It was the people who converted the objects into weapons of death. None of the above mentioned objects is dangerous until someone who is irresponsible takes control. Susie M. Morgan Spokane

Getting it backwards, getting it wrong

Harold Allwardt’s Your Turn diatribe concerning the erosion of his rights and waste of his time due to “irresponsible gun owners” (aka NRA members) was laughable. Somehow, Allwardt deduced that metal detectors were installed at the courthouse to thwart NRA member attempts to infiltrate our criminal justice system. What escaped his astute intellect and keen powers of observation was the fact that criminals are in the courthouse and want out.

Allwardt asserts, as if it were fact, “More shootings are inevitable, given the number of guns.” Let me provide an example of fact: “Since enacting its right to carry law in 1987, Florida’s homicide rate dropped from 37 percent above the national average to 3 percent below the national average.” (“Guns, Crime and Freedom” by NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre)

I attended the Friends of NRA banquet a few weeks ago and the most amazing thing happened: no one was shot! Despite the presence of two or three hundred NRA members and probably as many guns. According to Allwardt’s logic, a bloody massacre was inevitable, “considering the number of guns.” Joel T. Peach Spokane

LAW ENFORCEMENT

SWAT teams blew it

The Littleton, Colo., SWAT teams ought to rethink their priorities. From the news accounts, it appears the killing and wounding of the students was still taking place after the SWAT team’s arrival.

For the SWAT teams to not do whatever it took to stop the carnage is beyond belief. The area needed to be secured, but in a situation where people are being killed and wounded, the first priority should to stop the carnage. Obviously, this approach has some potential risk but how do you justify letting the carnage continue without doing everything in your power to stop it as soon as possible? Whatever happened to “protect and serve”? Michael F. Adair Spokane

Guardians were anything but

The Columbine High School massacre was a perfect example of what police shouldn’t do in such a situation.

Two armed kids begin shooting students indiscriminately. The deputy on duty at the school trades gunfire with the two as students are being killed, then goes for backup. Minutes later, two more deputies arrive, trade more shots, then they run away, too, leaving a school full of unarmed kids to deal with the problem until competent help arrives.

Meanwhile, the kids are following school policy by hiding, waiting for the help that already ran away.

Over the next three and a half hours, more than 150 law enforcement people gather outside, with four SWAT teams leading the way. Hearing the gunshots coming from inside, they very slowly clear the areas where the suspects aren’t, finally finding them already dead (most likely an hour or so earlier).

Other than pulling the wounded out, directing traffic and gawking, what did the police accomplish?

From the second it started, police were on the scene, yet nearly 50 unarmed kids were shot. The reasons given for not employing over 150 law enforcement officers into the school while kids were being executed is ridiculous. Obviously the policy and training these men received is wrong-headed and prioritizes their lives, not the unarmed victims. It obviously didn’t work too well.

As a society, we’re told to passively accept the role of victims so police can take care of our problems. In this terrible instance, those kids were virtually left to fend for themselves. They were failed. Michael Harmon Spokane

VIOLENCE

Restore the old values

Wake up, America, this is a societal problem that must be addressed immediately by all responsible adults. We are in a war of good and evil. What happened to the good old values, like accepting responsibility of our own actions?

The root of the problem lies at the lack of teaching basic moral values. It used to be in the home, with informed, interested parents, where these values were taught to the children and it was reinforced in the schools, religious and social institutions. This is no longer the case. Parents’, schools’ and others’ rights have been eroded by such institutions as the American Civil Liberties Union, Hollywood, news media, political correctness and the current national administration that thrives on deceit and divisiveness.

Wake up, America. Government cannot solve this problem. Only we adults can and must get it done. This problem deals with our most precious national resource, our children. They are our future. We must return to old-time values that made this nation the greatest on Earth. Moral and religious values must be restored and taught to our children in the home, schools and community activities. We must pay attention to our youths by spending more time with them and teaching them the black and white of moral values, getting them away from this gray world, which is currently being espoused from the president on down.

Wake up, America. Accept our responsibility as adults. This we owe to our children, our future. Eugene A. Norby Lind, Wash.

What was within was lethal

I disagree with some significant points in Rabbi Gerald L. Zelson’s commentary (Opinion, April 23) regarding the tragedy in Littleton, Colo. His admonition to look inside, look to ourselves and not God, is misleading.

I agree with his thesis that God is not to blame for this tragedy. I believe, however, that because these young men were looking to themselves and not to God, what was within themselves became the power, motivation and drive for their violent acts.

We can melt down every gun in America but I have found in my life’s experience and criminal justice career that to “melt down acts of violence” there must be insight into and acknowledgment of the garbage that may be within our consciousness and admit that we are not “islands unto ourselves.”

I believe that God is always looking for opportunities to influence our consciousness. We come to times of crisis in our lives when we have exhausted all of our own inner resources. I believe that when we acknowledge a need outside ourselves and seek God’s guidance and power, God will in his own inimitable way, provide his resources, including working through others to assist us.

The computer principle, “garbage in, garbage out” is applicable in this case. The garbage that came out of these young men entered their consciousness in a variety of ways and over time. The garbage within them triggered the violence at Columbine High. When God is truly sought, he does not give us garbage. Rather, God acts as a disposal. Ken Van Buskirk Spokane

Doomsaying is a growth industry

It amazes me that people keep asking why. Why would these kids go off? How about, they have nothing to live for?

They are peppered constantly with the fact that they have exactly zero future. In an attempt to gain media notoriety and government grants, activists of all sorts constantly exaggerate the severity of their causes, creating a blur of problems - all of which are going to destroy us all.

Think about it. If your cause is not serious enough to wipe out life on the planet as we know it, take a back seat, buddy, because we have our hands full with far more serious stuff. We’re all going to die from the hole in the ozone, from global warming, from deforestation, acid rain, bad air, bad water, e-coli, asbestos. World War Three has started in Europe, we’re overpopulated, there are coming food shortages, fuel shortages, Y2K. The American dream is gone, they’ll never be able to afford a home. College is unreachable due to spiraling costs. AIDS is rampant, the blood supply is tainted, the economy is soon to collapse. Salmon are dying and frogs are growing third legs. Drugs, violence, music, Hollywood. Kids can’t trust their teachers who strike, their parents who lie, their president who cheats.

All of our problems are solvable, but in order to get attention, each group has to be the squeakiest wheel. Impending doom and calamity is the order of the day. If one doesn’t take the time to sort through the rhetoric, it a pretty scary forecast.

Scary, indeed. Where’s my gun? Chris Warren Spokane

Time for mirror check - yes, you

We are again looking for blame in the deaths of our youth. “It’s the parents’ fault.” “It’s the schools fault.” “It is the fault of the culture.” “It’s the increased violence of the world’s fault.”

Myself, I think it is our fault.

An increased segment of the voting public does not think the children and young adults of our community are worthy of investment. They can serve us food, pump gas, load our groceries, shovel our snow, mow the greens, pull our golf carts, provide entertainment, make us proud of their behavior and accomplishments as it reflects on our communities, and when tragedy befalls them, we are in an unimaginable horror of grief and disbelief.

But they are not worthy of more teachers, more counselors, more behavior programs, after-school programs or increased security. We need not look far for those to blame. They are in our churches, our workplace - we may not even need to leave our homes to find them. God help us all. Julie C. Lohman Valley, Wash.

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

Homework load part of larger problem

Re: “School kids bring more work home” (April 19).

My 12-year-old daughter and I have battled homework since she was in the third grade. An above-average student, she and I quickly learned that our evenings and even weekends were to be held hostage to the unrelenting cycle of school work, most of it meaningless, time-consuming busy-work.

It is interesting to note that when my daughter attended a private school in the sixth grade, she had very little homework but was at least one-half year ahead in the subject matter being studied by her peers in public schools.

I feel most sorry for the kids whose parents work full time and arrive home too late and too tired to help their children with the time management and organization so necessary to completing school work; these skills usually being lacking in young children. I have watched many children steadily fall behind until, by fifth grade, they have simply given up. Judy Trigg Cheney

Only good schools are private schools

The recent violence in Littleton, Col., will solicit a million public school policy suggestions. Early intervention and counseling for “at risk” kids, after-school programs and stricter discipline are among the ideas offered to help combat the problem.

However, asking the government education bureaucracy to be pseudoparents for troubled kids will never work. Public schools are already having plenty of trouble simply teaching literacy and simple math skills. They produce poor results because they’re not accountable to the people they’re supposed to be serving. The tax dollars keep coming no matter what problems may occur.

Schools must be privatized to make them responsive to people’s needs; there must be a separation of school and state. Education consumers spending their own money would never tolerate unsafe schools or low-quality education. Free market education and charities would do a far better job saving disadvantaged kids than the disaster currently under way, especially if people quit relying on “the system” and begin to be responsible for kids. Without “free” government schools, caring parents would find and create economical and quality ways to educate their children, and America’s students would soon be No. 1 in the world.

Uncaring parents might consent to having their children helped by a local church or charity which would uplift kids, instead of dealing with problem kids only because they’re deemed a safety threat.

We read the headlines every day; socialist government schools are failing and broken. They must be abolished in favor of free market education. Everyone would benefit. Greg D. Holmes Spangle, Wash.

OTHER TOPICS

Keep `sickos’ under lock and key

Re: Human bones found in furnace.

Question: Why do we keep letting sex offenders out into society on their own? And of course we can’t deny them their rights!

Answer: So that human bones can be found in a “torture room,” making front page news.

It’s a no-brainer, people. Once we have these sickos locked up, flush the key! Tami N. Sorensen Spokane

Kosovo venture a ruse, mistake

The Clinton administration made a mistake getting involved in Kosovo. These people have been fighting each other for centuries, yet Clinton thinks bombing will bring peace. I doubt it.

Why does Clinton think the U.S. must police the world? We have troops all over the world trying to keep peace, yet the administration has reduced our military by a third or more. The main reason he is bombing Kosovo is to draw media attention from the China scandal. Glenn A. Herman Moses Lake