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OCTOBER 13, 2017, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM A moment of unity By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS After violence pierces U.S. cit- ies and towns, Americans come to- gether. Later politics can drive them apart. Or not, maybe just this once. As a grim Monday morning dawned in Las Vegas, Nevada repre- sentatives in Congress issued state- ments that eschewed gun politics. They stuck to themes of sympathy and shared useful informa- tion for constituents, such as where they could give blood. President Donald Trump delivered a somber, unifying address to the na- tion. Outside Nevada, gun control advocates urged a more political approach, at the risk of appearing opportunistic, or igno- rant about guns. Monday morning Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., jumped on Twit- ter to say, “To my colleagues: your cowardice to act cannot be white- washed by thoughts and prayers. None of this ends unless we do something to stop it.” Murphy also sent out a fund- raising email that directed the in- dignant to donate—with proceeds going to anti-gun groups and his 2018 re-election campaign. The link later excluded his campaign, but the whiff of opportunism clung to his effort. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tweeted, “The crowd fl ed at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make it easier to get.” (House Republicans were going to vote on a measure to streamline the purchase of gun sup- pressors last week, but delayed the vote after the mass shooting.) Thus Clinton displayed the other common foible of gun control ad- vocates—ignorance about fi rearms. Gun advocates scoffed her sugges- tion that silencers would have wors- ened the carnage, a notion which Politifact ruled as false, as silencers reduce a fi red shot’s noise a mere 20 percent or less. On Wednesday all four Ne- vada Democrats in Congress—Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto and Reps. Dina Titus, Ruben Kihuen and Jacky Rosen—announced their support of legislation to ban bump stocks, devices designed to increase the fi repower of semi-automatic ri- fl es. Authorities found bump stocks on a dozen of the fi rearms found in shooter Stephen Paddock’s Manda- lay Bay hotel suite. UNLV political science professor John Tuman noted that there’s deep widespread support “in the political culture of Nevada,” but also believes the Democrats were responding to constituents who believe Washing- ton should tighten gun laws. Nevada GOP Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Mark Amodei have reason to urge the Trump administration to ban bump stocks administratively. Such an action would spare them from having to cast a vote likely to alienate some of their voters—and to ban a device that the vast major- ity of gun owners probably never heard of until last week. Many gun rights advocates be- lieve that lawmakers like Sen. Di- anne Feinstein, D-Calif., sponsor of the Senate bump stock ban, won’t stop with bump stocks. She is af- ter all the author behind the 1994 federal assault weapons ban that lasted for 10 years. It’s hard to argue against the slippery slope argument. When the NRA shocked Washington with its support for reg- ulations to restrict bump stocks, Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto said in statement, “The NRA’s announce- ment is a welcome opening for conversation on additional measures we can take to protect the lives of Americans.” On the other side of the issue, there’s a general suspicion that broad gun laws don’t work. The Washing- ton Post ran a much-discussed opin- ion piece last week in which statis- tician Leah Libresco disclosed how three months of team research on gun deaths crushed her belief that sweeping gun laws work. “By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politi- cians tout,” Libresco wrote. “I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the ben- efi ts. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.” Measures which Libresco once considered “common sense reforms” didn’t really work. Good intentions yielded “policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a fi g- ure in a briefi ng book or an image on the news.” That is the hurdle supporters of gun restrictions will have to over- come: Would their prescription have stopped shooter Stephen Paddock, who bought his arsenal legally after passing a background check? Keep in mind the number of guns that already exist in the United States —in 2013 the Pew Founda- tion cites estimates between 270 million and 320 million. Asked on Fox News if he would support a measure to ban bump stocks, a frustrated Heller described the Sunday night shooting and re- sponded, “You show me that law that would stop that, not only would I support it, I would be an advocate for that law.” debra j. saunders (Creators Syndicate) America rises above its grievances By MICHAEL GERSON Who is left to defend the simple, often admirable, sometimes disap- pointing, American experience? Our politics seems deeply divided between those who think the coun- try is going to hell in a handcart and those who believe the country is going to hell in a handbasket. Some of the tenured class that sets the intellectual tone of the left concluded long ago that America was built by op- pression, is sustained by white privilege and re- quires the cleansing pu- rity of social revolution (however that is defi ned). In this story, capitalism ac- cumulates inequities that will eventually lead the rich to eat the poor. The American Dream is an exploitative myth. Change will only come through a coalition of the aggrieved. And those who are not permanently enraged are not paying proper attention. But, at least on the populist right, the social critique is every bit as harsh. In this story, America has fall- en in a boneless heap from a great height. It is unrecognizable to peo- ple—mostly white people—who regard mid-20th-century America as a social and economic ideal. The country has been fundamentally al- tered by multiculturalism and po- litical correctness. It has been ruined by secularism and moral relativism. America, says the Rev. Franklin Graham, is “on the verge of total moral and spiritual collapse.” And those who are not permanently of- fended are not paying proper atten- tion. A poll taken last year found that 72 percent of Donald Trump sup- porters believe American society and its way of life have changed for the worse since the 1950s. And the most pessimistic and discontent- ed lot of all was white, evangelical Protestants. Almost three-quarters believed the last 70 years to be a pe- riod of social decline. Those of us who remember poli- tics in the Reagan era have a mental habit of regarding conservatism as more optimistic about the American experi- ment and liberalism as more discontented. But representatives of both ideologies—in their most potent and con- fi dent versions—are now making fundamen- tal critiques of American society. They are united in their belief that America is dominated by corrupt, self-serving elites. They are united in their call for radical rather than incremental change. While disagree- ing deeply about the cause, they see America as careening off course. Little wonder that Americans con- sistently say their country in on the wrong track by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Disgruntlement is our nation’s common ground. What group believes that Ameri- can society has gotten better since the 1950s? About 60 percent of Af- rican-Americans and Hispanics. On a moment’s refl ection, this makes perfect sense. Compared with 70 years ago, when much of the coun- try was legally segregated, daily life has improved for racial and ethnic minorities. As it has for gays and women seeking positions of social and economic leadership. Many conservatives have failed to appreciate the mixed legacy of mo- other voices dernity. In recent decades, America has seen declining community and family cohesion and what former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy calls “a loneliness epidem- ic.” “We live in the most technologi- cally connected age in the history of civilization,” he says, “yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s.” But the fl ip side of individual- ism is greater social freedom. Who would not prefer to be in a racially mixed marriage today compared with 70 years ago? Or to have bi- racial children? When conservatives express unreserved nostalgia for the 1950s, they are also expressing a damning tolerance for oppression. It does appear like a longing for lost privilege. The alternative to disdain for American society on the left and right is not to sanitize our country’s history or excuse its manifold fail- ures. It is to do what reforming pa- triots from Abraham Lincoln to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have done: to elevate and praise American ideals while courageously applying them to our social inconsistencies and hypocrisies. “What greater form of patriotism is there,” asked Presi- dent Obama in his admirable 2015 Selma speech, “than the belief that America is not yet fi nished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?” And this might be matched with a spirit of gratitude—for a country capable of shame and change, and better than its grievances. (Washington Post Writers Group) The people can change our gun culture By GENE H. McINTYRE On Tuesday morning, October 3, the second day after the massacre in Las Vegas, media reported this and that as it does every day. One piece of in- formation, nevertheless, stood out for me. It was among “story stocks” where the U.S. company, Sturm Ruger, a fi rearms maker, saw its shares trading higher with investors ponder- ing whether the violence in Las Vegas will lead to greater gun sales. This news about profi t- making among fi rearm makers is sadly repeated time and again after every mass shooting in America and subsequent to the foreboding University of Texas tower shooting in August 1966. One can interpret this news how- ever he likes; yet, to me, it notifi es that more and more of my fellow Americans are getting armed. And that, statistically speaking, means more and more among us, includ- ing the mentally ill, those seeking to settle a score, the very-angry-about- something-crowd, will commit an act of violence with use of a fi rearm. The bottom line is that this violence prob- lem is not shared to the same degree around the world in democracies like ours. It is an old and tired story that re- minds us that our legislators, in state capitals and Washington, D.C., are too often fi nancially and ideologi- cally beholden to the National Rifl e Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America, fi rearms makers, gun clubs and their personal interpretation of the Second Amendment cannot put their heads, hearts and, most impor- tantly, the gray matter they possess, to action suffi cient to bring this matter of excessive fi rearms-use-violence un- der control. Simple adjustments even, like personalizing technology such as fi ngerprint recognition, could make a big difference. An experimental psychologist, Ste- ven Pinker of Harvard, argues that people alive today are actually liv- ing with less violence than in for- mer times. He sees a world, as we all do, with brutal wars, mindless kill- ings, terrorism and even genocide yet Pinker stands by his position as one who believes we actually appreciate improve- ment nowadays. One case study to support his conten- tion was World War II, from September 1, 1939 to Septem- ber 2, 1945, that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 60 million people. Meanwhile, events such as the one in Las Vegas could persuade a modern day observer to contend another point of view. Analysis by Pinker sees motives in the human brain that attract us to violence as well as those motives that inhibit us from violence. He labels the former motives as inner demons, refer- ring to pure predation or exploitation, drive for dominance, revenge and sadism. The other side of this para- dox he calls the better angels or those motives that pull us away from vio- lence, providing with empathy, self- control, fairness, reason, and rational- ity. In our lives, then, it depends on which motives have the upper hand: those inner demons or better angels which govern our decisions and con- sequent actions. Why is violence so high in the U.S.? America was a land of lawless- ness for much of the years before the 20th century what with the Revolu- tionary War, the Indian wars, the con- fl icts with other nations vying to con- guest column Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com MANAGING EDITOR SUBSCRIPTIONS Eric A. Howald editor@keizertimes.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Derek Wiley news@keizertimes.com One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY ADVERTISING Publication No: USPS 679-430 Paula Moseley advertising@keizertimes.com POSTMASTER Send address changes to: PRODUCTION MANAGER Andrew Jackson Keizertimes Circulation graphics@keizertimes.com 142 Chemawa Road N. LEGAL NOTICES Keizer, OR 97303 legals@keizertimes.com EDITOR & PUBLISHER Lyndon Zaitz publisher@keizertimes.com BUSINESS MANAGER Laurie Painter billing@keizertimes.com Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon RECEPTION Lori Beyeler INTERN Random Pendragon facebook.com/keizertimes twitter.com/keizertimes trol North America and the state of anarchy that prevailed just before and for long after the Civil War. Ordinary Americans often could not count on any government to protect them— such as when the nearest sheriff was 200 miles away—provide an insight to those former times. Without laws being enforced, Americans made up their own “laws” and decided what constituted justice. Deciding for one- self what’s right and wrong deter- mines the wild ways a whole lot of Americans behave to this day and a major reason why we have so many lawless events. Other democracies, such as Austra- lia and New Zealand, with frontiers to settle not entirely unlike our own, have come together with a common interest to establish and maintain a civilized society. We could and should do the same but have failed deplor- ably to date in not doing so. The most obscene and disgusting of violent acts, such as that at Sandy Hook Elemen- tary School in Newtown, Conn., did not bring reform any more than the more than the 30,000 Americans ev- ery year who lose their lives to fi re- arms along with day-in-day-out at least 30 Americans being shot and murdered. Are we helpless? Have we not proven our mettle so many times in our history and thereby rise to wrestle this issue to a successful win should we set our minds to it. Most Amer- ican-based surveys show that a clear majority of us want controls on fi re- arms with those controls enforced; so, what’s stopping us from stepping up in a ground swell to demand a safer America where every American no longer wonders whether he will be the next to be shot. (Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)