Your Voice: June 8, 2022

For five years they followed 1,000 women across the U.S.A. who either had an abortion or were denied one. They found that women who were allowed an abortion were six times more likely to report aspirational 1-year plans and were more likely to have a wanted child later and were better able to care for the children they already had (the majority of abortion patients are already parents).

Women forced to carry a pregnancy to term were more likely to experience financial hardships, were three times as likely to be unemployed and four times as likely to be below the federal poverty level. They had lower self-esteem, lower life satisfaction, were more likely to report “fair or poor” health, difficulty bonding with their baby, and their older children had worse developmental outcomes.

From other sources, I have learned that when abortion was legalized after Roe versus Wade, the number of abortions did not rise, nor will it go down should the high court either ban or put extreme limits on abortion. It is no different in the rest of the world. Country after country, even strongly catholic countries, are rolling back abortion bans. To care about life is to protect the right of people to make their own choices on abortion.

Dr. Foster reports that “the clearest finding from the Turnaway Study is that people know what is best for themselves and their families … Understanding the nature, causes, and solutions to human problems is one of the primary goals and great gifts of science … The highest court in the United States should not ignore it.”

Michael Beug

Husum

Ouroboros

It’s very tiring to watch society keep going around in circles complaining for more laws every time there is a shooting. The media and politicians keep this emotional circle going enough to keep a lot of people from thinking critically about these situations. They do this with many things whether it’s deliberate or not. They all use the same few catch phrases like “weapons of war,” “common sense gun laws” and “assault weapons.” It would seem that they attach emotions to these phrases in hopes that you don’t ask what these all mean and if they mean anything at all.

Who has looked up the definition of a mass shooting? Does the media or politicians define these phrases before they start talking about them? Who has read the Second Amendment and noticed the commas? What does that mean? This goes for other amendments. Do we allow interpretation and if so, why do we have a constitution and why would they have even bothered to make one? Do people even know what a right is and what a freedom is? If our government is so worried about guns being in the wrong hands, why do they leave millions of dollars’ worth of guns in third world countries for kids, etc., to use? Do you have a say in how someone can protect themselves and if so, doesn’t that make you an authoritarian?

We have laws that make murder illegal but that doesn’t stop people, why? How is making more laws going to stop people from murdering? How is more law enforcement going help when you have seconds but it takes them minutes to help you?

We have been conditioned since the beginning of time to rely on someone else to save us instead of being empowered to save ourselves. Why is that? How come millions were murdered in the 20th Century because they looked outward for protection? Will we look inward and start critically thinking or keep running on emotions? Is it time yet for humanity to break these mental chains?

Doug Geary

Hood River

Double standard

Liberals are predictably outraged, incensed, aghast, take your pick, over gun deaths yet they could easily save 3,000 kids each and every day by working to eliminated abortion. This is, of course, unless they have a strict political double-standard.

Mike Goodpaster

Goldendale

Take action

The recent mass shootings could have been prevented if Congress had acted after the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. There was talk of a ban on AR-15 rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines but this did not happen because the Republicans are controlled by the NRA and powerful gun lobbyists that want to keep selling guns to anyone and they don’t care who gets killed even young, vulnerable children in an elementary school. The Republicans and NRAs answer to the Uvalde shooting is to arm the teachers in our schools. Is that the educational environment we want for our children?

The killers are typically 18–25 year-old males who have a brain that is not fully developed! Young adults ability to reason and think logically and act with forethought and maturity can be compromised by intense emotions and mental health issues. Most of the young male shooters have spent hours and hours playing violent video games and watching violent movies where they become desensitized to killing and practice their shooting skills. The United States hate, violence, and gun culture are all responsible for mass shootings. The rifle industry has marketed their AR-15 rifles to young males who are told through advertising “consider your man card reissued” showing an AR-15 weapon. This military weapon is being marketed to a civilian clientele. Gun companies and sellers make a lot of money selling AR-15s! It is all about campaign money for the Republicans!

Please call your representatives to ask for a ban of the AR-15 rifle or at least increase the age for purchase to 21 years. All people who want to buy an AR-15 should have a special permit to have a military style weapon. We need background checks, red flag laws, limit the size of magazines to 10 bullets, and provide funds for mental health services. Take action in honor of the 19 children and two teachers who died in Uvalde and the 10 people in Buffalo. Parents please don’t let your children play violent video games and watch violent movies. The next mass shooting could kill someone you love!

Nancy Johanson Paul

Hood River

Expanding Memorial Day

I spent considerable time last Memorial Day weekend thinking about and remembering the U.S. military personnel who have died or suffered great personal loss while serving in the armed forces. I would like to propose, starting next year, expanding the scope of Memorial Day to include the children, adults, and first responders who have died in mass shootings. Invaluable lives will continue to be lost if we continue to allow anyone and everyone to buy and own all the guns and ammunition they need to feel more secure and less fearful.

Bruce Bolme

White Salmon

Why?

Why, is all the attention in this mass shooting focused on the hardware, whereas in the previous event it was all on the individual? Could it be because this shooter was not white?

Why, since they control the House, the Senate and the White House, won’t Democrats introduce real “common sense” gun legislation? Because they would rather have it as an issue to campaign on, than legislation to defend. Raising the purchase age to 21 for instance, would pass, but they’ll add nonsense measures they know won’t pass, just to keep the issue stirred up.

Why do judges, both conservative and liberal, continue to rule that the Second Amendment means exactly what it says? Because we are a nation of laws and are obligated to either follow or change those laws, not just ignore them.

Why does the law in Texas allow 18 year old’s to buy rifles? Because for 200 years that was a rite of passage for young men. They would buy (lethal, bolt-action and semi-automatic) rifles and carry them on gun racks in pickup trucks in school parking lots, and nobody got killed. In fact, in the first modern school mass shooting (see Texas Tower shooting), some of those young men used those rifles to shoot back at the killer, pinning him down and saving lives. It’s not the hardware, it’s the culture.

An AR-15 is not a military assault rifle. It looks like a military weapon, but is functionally the same, and no more lethal than, an ordinary semi-automatic hunting rifle. It has become immensely popular, and used in more “I want to be infamous” shootings, because of all the publicity focused on it by people (including the president) who don’t understand firearms.

According to the FBI, rifles of all kinds were used in fewer than 400 of the 20,000 homicides in the U.S. last year. Why do people think banning semi-automatic rifles would have any real impact on gun violence? Because it’s easier than dealing with the real problem, which has to do with humanity, not hardware.

Steve Hudson

The Dalles

Gun safety

A group of Oregon faith leaders called “Lift Every Voice Oregon “ is trying to get a gun safety initiative on the Oregon ballot in November. They need 112,000 valid signatures by July 8. Right now you can help and it is easy to do. Just go to lifteveryvoiceoregon.com, read their petition, and if you agree, print out the one-page petition, sign it and mail it.

The proposed initiative requires that all gun buyers have a permit, and in order to get that permit from local police, they must take in-person safety classes, pass a background check (increasing the time for the check from three to 30 days), and pay a fee. The state police would maintain a new permit/firearm database. In addition it limits ammunition magazines sold, used or manufactured in Oregon to ten rounds (children’s lives have been saved when the shooter had to reload).

Right now Oregon is open-carry — you don’t have to have a permit unless you apply for a concealed firearm license. This is a common-sense initiative — it even spells out how those who already have larger magazines can legally use them and it involves local and state police.

Most gun owners are law-abiding and careful. If you agree that we need to prevent the dangerous and troubled from carrying out vengeance with guns, help get this initiative on the ballot. Nothing else in working, maybe letting the voters decide will.

Joanne Ward

The Dalles

Hood River’s Angel

It was uplifting to see the lady in a gold SUV stopped on the side of Cascade Avenue at 8:20 a.m. on June 3, handing a pair of shoes to a young man. His feet were bare, muddy and in poor shape. But his smile, that smile, was wide and genuine. I know you saw my thumbs up salute from my parked car’s window down near the Lilo’s BBQ restaurant.

Humanity acting at its best. It was noticed.

Scott Haanstad

Hood River