August 8, 2012 COMMUNITY OPINION Page ,5
LF .TTr .RS TO TtlE EDITOR
The law-abiding gun owner side
How about rest of me takes even greater offense to
of the numbers? her statement that she feels all gun
owners are bad or as she states,
Editor: "only bad people own guns." The
Re: "Guns 'R' Us and we pay Sweet Home community must have
the price" (Aug. 1), statistics are a at least a 70-85 percent instance of
great way to get your point across gun ownership so she is surrounded
and I applaud Ms. Daiute's re- by bad people.
search. As a bit of irony she believes
She could also have pointed that combat veterans should be
out that between 200t and 2010 leading the cause to ban firearms.
there were 400,778 automobile re- You know why they, by and large,
lated deaths. We should ban auto~ don't? Because they have been to
mobiles, the messed-up countries where the
Smoking kills 443,000 annu- dictatorships have taken away the
ally. An estimated 5 million who citizens' guns and seen that there,
were 0-17 in 1995 could die prema- in fact, only the bad people have the
turely from tobacco-related causes.
guns.
We spend an estimated $200 billion That's why we have to spend
in health care costs related to to- trillions of dollars going in and
bacco use. We should ban tobacco cleaning up their mess while sac-
products, rificing our soldiers' precious lives
In 2001 alone, 775,766 deaths because they have no means of pro-
were attributable to alcohol use. tecting or defending themselves.
Of those 4,554 were under 21 and Only the law-abiding follow the
13,674 were. in a motor vehicle. We laws; this is elementary thinking
should ban alcohol use. here.
We haven't even begun to to- Giving Bill Clinton's ineffec-
tal the deaths from drug-related tual gun/high capacity magazine
causes, ban credit for a reduction in crime
Banning something is not is laughable. All that it really did
the way to solve the problem. We was make it more expensive to ob-
need responsible adult role models tain still perfectly legal firearms and
to teach right and wrong ,to teach magazines.
safety and responsibility in these If anything, it was a hindrance
matters, whether it be guns, automo- to crime fighting as it made it much
biles, alcohol, tobacco, or any other harder for police officers to obtain
area in their lives, high-capacity magazines to fight
We need law enforcement and crime with. The red tape involved in
judicial officials to enforce the cur- doing this discouraged many officers
rent laws and make the penalties into just giving up on the process. I
stiffer So people realize the conse- saw it with my own eyes many times
quences of their actions, over. It lasted for 10 years and when
I have no problem with gun it expired there was virtually no one
owners who obtained their guns le- interested in renewing it because of
gally and use them responsibly. I its utter uselessness and was a prov-
have no problem with people who en failure in every way.
own cars and have them licensed and The statistics thrown around are
insured legally and drive responsi- very misleading. First of alll most of
bly. I have no problem with people the quoted ones are from the CDC.
who have an occasional drink and This organization is as anti-gun as
do not become intoxicated. (Smok- the NRA is pro.
ing and drugs I do have a problem Anyone under 18 is considered
with ) a "child" in these statistics. Homi-
I don't want to take away peo- cides are not broken down into jus-
pie's fights to own guns, automo- tifiable and non-, so every 17-year-
biles, cameras, cell phones or any old gang-banger shot by a police
other commodities. What I would officer or law-abiding citizen in self
like is guidelines that are enforced to defense is considered a "homicide."
promote the safe use of these things If that doesn't skew the facts, I
for the protection of everyone, don't know what does! Inter-gang
Don Austin homicides are also not taken into
Sweet Home account, rightly or wrongly.
I also don't understand compar-
Argument against ing the number of pre-schoolers to
police officers as some kind of sta-
guns is offensive tistic. She quotes "those same two
years" but doesn't specify which
Editor: two years. There are 26.7 million
As a lifelong gun owner who children up to the age of 5 in the
has never used a firearm inappropri- U.S. and around 800,000 law en-
ately, like 99.9 percent of us, I can't forcement officers.
help but be offended by Ms. Diane So out of 26,700,000 children
Daiute's letter to the editor in the roughly 86 to 87 children were trag-
August 1st edition of The New Era. ically killed with firearms, per year,
Actually, as a human being, I am of- in some random two-year, span, a
fended, terrible thing. According to her sta-
She stated that Americans don't tistics, out of the 800,000 police of-
care about or grieve for the children ricers, 89 were killed in the line of
killed in gun-related deaths. What! duty.
I don't know a single person who That is the most misleading sta-
doesn't grieve over the loss of a tistic quoted by Ms. Daiute. That's
child, accidental or otherwise! 44 to 45 per year but how many were
I grieve for any and every child killed by firearms? Accidents, espe-
lost to any accident, whether a car cially traffic accidents, have been the
accident, drowning in a bucket or a leading cause of death for police of-
pool, Stuck in household furniture, ricers in the line of duty until 2011. I
run over by a lawnmower, backed am saddened by any innocent death
over by a delivery truck, or a bike or but the percentages hardly suggest
skateboard accident, an epidemic justifying the sacrifice
It is horrible under any circum- of a constitutional right. The per-
stances, but terrible accidents hap- centage of pre-schoolers killed by
pen. a firearm each year Comes out to
0.0000032 percent. And for police
officers it is 0.000055 percent.
Also, why does the gun get the
blame? It is an inanimate object.
When a drunk driver kills someone,
no one blames the car. Someone
could do a lot more damage with a
Prius than an AR-15 and would be a
1o! harder to stop.
If the gun doesn't get the
blame, the NRA does, as proven by
Ms. Daiute's letter. The NRA trains
1,300 law enforcement officers each
year. That hardly suggests as Ms.
Daiute does, that "they have their
little gun safety classes, etc."
In the state of Oregon, as well
as most others, you must take hand-
gun training in order to get a Con-
cealed Handgun License from an
NRA-certified instructor. The NRA
is the acknowledged authority on
firearms training.
The NRA also has an excellent
gun safety program for children,
called the Eddie Eagle Program,
which could all but eliminate these
accidents in the first place. It is com-
pletely free to any school or orga-
nization because it is paid forby us
evil NRA members.
This program has no political
aspirations. It simply tells the child
that, if they find a gun: don't touch
it, leave the area and tell an adult. It
is as simple as that but it is not used
enough because of politics.
Our schools inform our chil-
dren about drugs, alcohol, smok:
ing, dangerous driving and sex-ed
but nothing about guns and then we
wonder why accidents happen. It's
mind numbingly ignorant.
Now, for some real, plain-as
-the-nose-on-your-face numbers.
According to a year 2000 study and
survey/poll published in the Jour-
nal of Quantitative Criminology,
U.S. civilians use firearms to de-
fend themselves from crime at least
989,883 times per year.
Another 1994 survey, by the
CDC, found that Americans use
firearms to frighten away intruders
breaking into their homes 489,000
times per year. Even they couldn't
deny reality.
Ms. Daiute, you ask "what's
more important to me - my chil-
dren or my guns?" I'll take the
0.0000032% chance of an acci-
dent (actually a lot less than that,
since my children have been taught
gun safety practically from birth)
against the fact that I am in the
group that has used my gun to stop
criminals from plying their trade,
and so have innumerable people I
know very well.
Guns in the hands of law-abid-
ing citizens stop crime, it's an abso-
lute fact!
There was also some obscure
reference made about the set-
tiers along the Oregon Trail killing
themselves off with their shoo-
tin' irons faster than hostile Indi-
ans could do it.
I doubt that statistic as much
as your other skewed ones, but I do
believe that the number of Settlers
killed by hostiles was low and I
know why: They had guns!
Jeff Hutchins
Corvallis
'Twisted' truth in
gun argument
Editor:
In response to Ms. Daiute's
letter about how bad guns are, and
how we should not have the right
to own one, I would like to tell her
more facts, since she has twisted
the truth.
Cities such as Chicago and
New York have the strictest gun
laws, yet the highest crime and
murder rates in the world. Crimi-
nals don't normally try to attack or
commit a crime against someone
who might have a gun to protect
themselves.
The idea of taking guns away
from the law-abiding citizens an-
gers me. It would have my dad,
who happened to carry a rifle in
Europe during World War Ilto
protect that right and your right for
free speech.
If he were alive today and
knew the Democrats were trying
to take that right away, murder
unborn babies and make marriage
available to homosexuals, he would
have changed parties, as I have.
Your idea that murders only oc-
curred during the Reagan and Bush
years is idiotic. How many lives
were saved by law-abiding citizens
owning guns during those 30 years
you do not tell us. As far as settlers
dying form their guns, how many
would have died from Indians and
outlaws without having a gun?
Or how many thousands would
have died of starvation without a
gun?
It's ludicrous that anyone
would think that families traveling
out west would be safer without a
gun.
I have to tell you, Ms. Daiute,
that the No. 1 cause~f death for ba-
bies is not guns, but abortion. Lib-
erals are only liberal until someone
disagrees with them.
As far as owning guns, thou-
sands have sacrificed for our free-
doms, such as our Second Amend-
ment right.
This is where I am pro-choice.
I choose to own a gun. If you do
not, that's fine with me.
Dennis Huenergardt
Sweet Home
Hey, if you don't
want a gun, fine
Editor:
Did you know that Swiss gov-
ernment issues every household a
gun and trains every adult that they
issue a gun to how to use that gun?
Switzerland had lowest gun-relat-
ed crime rate in the world. Hmmm.
Maybe we need more guns and less
gun control.
There were 56 million de-
fenseless people rounded up and
exterminated in the 20th century,
all in the name of gun control.
Most guns that are used to
commit a crime is done illegally.
Gun laws do not stop any one who
is determined to commit a crime.
More than 2 million times a
year people have used a gun to stop
violence, 90 percent of the time a
crime is stopped before it is com-
mitted when confronted by an indi-
vidual brandishing a gun.
The liberals would love to
strip Americans of their guns be-
cause people with guns are. citizens
and without guns they are subjects
and subjects are easier to control
than citizens.
The "right to choose" that the
liberals are so vocal about protect-
ing when it comes to killing unborn
children, choosing who marries
and what to protest does not seem
to apply when it comes to owning
a gun.
They say: "If you don't want
to have an abortion, don't have
one, if you don't believe in same-
sex marriage, don't marry the same
sex. If you don't believe in some-
thing enough to go out and protest,
then don't go protest. But don't
deny me the right to an abortion, to
marry whom I choose, or the right
to protest."
So I say, if you don't believe
in owning guns don't buy one and
please don't call someone who has
a gun to defend you if you are in
some type of danger.
For some reason the liberals
hate the fact that someone might
have a different opinion than they
do so that person needs to be pun-
ished by more laws and more regu-
lations. For some reason they can't
just agree to disagree without mak-
ing it all personal.
I wonder if Diane has ever
wondered how many people are
still alive because someone had
a gun to protect them from harm.
How many children are alive be-
cause Mom or Dad knew how and
did use a gun to protect them from
predators of all kinds?
I wonder if she knows how
many children did not starve to
death because they had a dad or
mom who hunted and "brought
home the bacon," so to speak?
I wonder if she knows how
many guns the Secret Service has
so it can protect President Obama?
If you take all the guns away
from Amoricans, who will protect
you when you need it?
You can bet it won't be this
present administration and his pack
of do-gooders.
They won't even enforce the
present laws on immigration or
voter intimidation.
Jeani West
Sweet Home
11 t II
D TIMT ,4PP'a ?
