Letters for Aug. 3, 2023

Compelling argument for ranked choice voting

Recently, I watched Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski on the PBS program “Firing Line.” I thought she gave a compellingly positive description of the ranked choice voting system and a compellingly negative description of closed primaries.

I know some people have said ranked choice voting is too hard to understand and has inherent flaws that make it a bad system, but listening to Sen. Murkowski describe it, it just seemed to me to be a much better system than the one we use now.

And in many states, closed primaries keep independent voters from having any say in who will be on the final slate of candidates and that is just wrong.

Jeremy Street

Cheney

Analyze the data on homicide rates

First of all, our gun laws are not really the embarrassing thing here (“Gun laws are an embarrassment,” July 21). What is embarrassing is our seeming unwillingness to enforce the laws that are in place or to assign punishments that may have a chance of deterring some of our citizens’ violent behavior.

All of this “AR-15 assault weapon” hype is misleading at best, employed to aid those whose agenda is to disarm Americans.

Here’s another reason it is misleading. AR-15 assault style weapons are not the weapon of choice for most homicides in the United States. Here is the breakdown from FBI data:

Handguns: 45.7%; Rifles (including AR-15 type weapons): 2.6%; Shotguns: 1.4%; others, including unknown: 23.9%.

It should be obvious to any reasonable person that eliminating AR-15 style assault weapons from the U.S. would reduce the homicide rate by only 2.6%. And I would add here that these percentages only apply to guns. Statistically, 10.6% of all homicides in the U.S. in 2021 were committed with knives.

Speaking of knives, I noticed that the writer was sort of criticizing our neighbor state Idaho for having weak gun laws. Let’s not forget that not too long ago, four beautiful young people were killed in cold blood. They were stabbed to death in their sleep.

Probably not the best time to scold Idaho about their gun laws.

Also, I noticed that nobody in the media started screaming “knife violence!” following this horrific crime. They called it what it was: homicide, by person or persons as yet unknown. Knives and guns are not violent. People are violent.

Spencer L. Shaw

Spokane

Congressional oversight

House investigations have been part of life since Congress started work in the late 1700s. While Congressional investigative powers are broad, the Supreme Court has ruled such investigations must be limited to “legislative purposes” and avoid the strictly private affairs of individual citizens. But that’s no fun! Because investigations are televised, they have devolved into partisan reality shows as politicians compete for cable news face time with focus group tested soundbites.

The investigation de jour is the politicization of the DOJ and FBI. The “legislative solution” was proposed almost 50 years ago by post-Watergate President Jimmy Carter. The attorney general, who heads up the Department of Justice and the FBI, is a political appointee in the president’s Cabinet. Carter’s idea was to make the AG’s office an independent agency similar to the Federal Reserve. This would reduce politicians’ TV bickering and therefore has zero chance of happening.

We need to break free from the partisan hacks forced on us by today’s political duopoly and elect citizens committed to solving problems. Support open primaries and ranked choice voting.

Jim Baumker

Liberty Lake