12A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2016
Dam road: Water district believes the structure is a liability
Continued from Page 1A
The City Commission voted
in May against renewing a $1.2
million agreement with the
water district and the Colum-
bia River Estuary Study Task-
force that would have provided
the city with a single-lane bridge
over the Skipanon River to
ensure emergency access once
the dam is removed. The com-
mission had twice voted for the
deal in the past, but reversed
course under pressure.
The Nygaard family, who
own Warrenton Fiber, and
Mayor Mark Kujala’s fam-
ily, who own property near
the dam, do not want the dam
removed because of looding
concerns.
The water district and
CREST, however, have moved
forward without the city. The
water district’s board voted
Monday to give Tessa Scheller,
the board’s chairwoman, per-
mission to sign a memoran-
dum of understanding with
CREST on a $1 million project
to remove the dam and improve
ish passage and water quality.
The task force will use federal
Bonneville Power Administra-
tion money to fund the project,
which could be completed by
the end of 2018.
The water district has
removed the tide gates on the
dam, but three narrow culverts
that restrict the low of water
and ish remain in place.
The dam removal project
will require a city permit, which
could provide a forum for prop-
erty owners and others who
want to save the dam to raise
objections. Legal challenges are
also possible.
The water district believes
the dam — built by the federal
government in 1963 and turned
over to the district after exceed-
ing a 50-year life span — is a
legal liability.
An
engineering
plan
adopted by the water dis-
trict describes the structure as
unsafe and largely useless for
lood control.
“I think that, if it ever hits
the courts, we’re going to be the
ones that are being looked at as
being responsible owners of the
structure, because we’re try-
ing to protect the public,” Fran-
cis said. “Now, we tried to pro-
tect the public and give the city
access by giving it a 16-foot-
wide bridge. They have not
agreed to that. So this is where
you end up: You either get
something, or you get nothing.”
An examiner working for
the water district’s insurer deter-
mined that the structure is a
liability.
“Someone could go into
the river with a truck, or a car,
or a piece of machinery ... and
I’m afraid we would be liable,”
Scheller said.
Although the water district
installed a sign indicating that
only authorized vehicles may
use the road, the safety mea-
sure has not stopped commer-
cial trafic, which the dam is not
designed to support.
The aging structure, accord-
ing to some, has also caused
looding problems.
“The biggest problem with
the dam there now, from my
point of view, is that it increases
looding on Dolphin Road and
Perkins Lane when there is
heavy downpours and heavy
drainage coming down along
the Skipanon,” Chuck Switzer, a
board member, said.
Gun ownership drops in US,
but support for gun rights grows
By LARRY FENN and
ANGELIKI KASTANIS
Associated Press
AP Photo/Winslow Townson
Members of the “End Zone Militia” watch fighter jets flyover Gillette Stadium before a New England Patriots NFL football
game against the Buffalo Bills in Foxborough, Mass., in 2009. Michael Waldman, author of “The Second Amendment: A
Biography,” says when James Madison first proposed the right to bear arms, it was specifically seen as a right for gun
ownership in the service of militias, which were seen as a bulwark against the possible tyranny and risk of overreach
from a central government. That rationale for gun ownership still exists among many today.
Guns: Debate is one of the more toxic in US
Continued from Page 1A
interpretation of the law have
shifted so much that outright
gun bans are unthinkable. It’s
true that large segments of the
public have expressed support
for some aspects of gun regu-
lation — but when Americans
have been asked to say which is
more important, gun control or
gun rights, they trend toward the
latter.
Fewer at home
That shift has come, perhaps
surprisingly, as fewer Americans
today choose to keep a gun in
their home. The General Social
Survey, a massive study under-
taken by NORC at the Univer-
sity of Chicago since 1972 and
one of the foremost authorities
on gun ownership, found 31
percent of households had guns
in 2014. That was down from a
high of 50.4 percent in 1977.
“Institutions have repeated,
‘More guns, less crime. More
guns, less crime,’ over and
over again for almost 40 years,
and it’s hard to turn that belief
around in any easy way,” said
Joan Burbick, an emeritus pro-
fessor at Washington State Uni-
versity who wrote “Gun Show
Nation: Gun Culture and Ameri-
can Democracy” and who owns
a gun for hobby shooting.
Among the longest-existing
measures of public gun senti-
ment is a Gallup poll question
asking whether there should be
a law banning handguns except
by police and other authorized
people. When it was irst asked,
in July 1959, 60 percent of
respondents approved of such a
measure.
By last October, only 27 per-
cent agreed.
The NRA
Many point to a single
date as crucial in the societal
shift: May 21, 1977, when the
National Rile Association held
its annual meeting at a conven-
tion hall in Cincinnati.
“That was the moment, in
one evening, when the gun
debate in America radically
changed,” said Winkler.
The turmoil of the country in
the 1960s and 1970s roiled insti-
tutions of all kinds, the NRA
included. The organization had
fought gun laws in the past, but
also had come to accept some,
including the Gun Control Act
of 1968. As the next decade
wore on and the NRA entered
its second century, it faced an
identity crisis: Was it a coali-
tion of sportsmen, or a political
powerhouse?
Leaders were set on the for-
mer, drawing up plans to move
its headquarters from Washing-
ton to Colorado and to retreat
from politics. Some of its most
iery members disagreed, stag-
ing a revolt that night that
stretched into the next morning,
and remade the group’s leader-
ship. Plans for a westward move
were scuttled, and a rightward
move politically was sealed.
The gun lobby’s increasingly
powerful voice found recep-
tive ears among a public that
witnessed the country’s civil
rights battles, assassinations
of beloved leaders and grow-
ing lawlessness in cities. Over
time, statehouses and Congress
bowed to the inluence of the
NRA and its allies. And in 2008,
the U.S. Supreme Court inally
declared Americans have the
right to a gun for self-defense.
“What they (gun rights advo-
cates) did is a classic example of
how you make constitutional
change: They realized they
needed to win in the court of
public opinion before you could
win in the court of law,” said
Michael Waldman, president of
the Brennan Center for Justice at
New York University and author
of “The Second Amendment: A
Biography.”
Gun owners today
Pew Research Center data
provides a sketch of what the
gun-owning populace looks like
today:
• 74 percent of gun owners
are men and 82 percent are white.
• Those in rural areas are
more than twice as likely as
urbanites to own a gun.
• Ownership rates in the
Northeast are lower than in the
rest of the country.
• Gun owners are far more
likely to identify with or lean
toward the Republican Party.
Data from GSS shows gun
owners are more likely to have
higher incomes — and to vote.
Taken together, this is a
description of a motivated and
politically potent group. But their
clout sometimes obscures a sim-
ple fact: Though polarization
appears in broad questions on
gun rights, far more consensus
emerges on individual proposals.
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Many Americans agree
A Pew poll released in
August showed 85 percent of
people support background
checks for purchases at gun
shows and in private sales; 79
percent support laws to pre-
vent the mentally ill from buy-
ing guns; 70 percent approve of
a federal database to track gun
sales; and 57 percent favor a ban
on assault weapons.
“The fact is it’s not divisive.
The things that we’re advo-
cating in the American pub-
lic, when you’re talking about
keeping guns out of dangerous
hands, we all agree. We all agree
on the solutions,” said Dan
Gross, president of the Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun Vio-
lence, and whose brother was
severely hurt in a shooting. “The
only place where this is truly a
controversial issue is, tragically
and disgracefully, in Congress
and in our statehouses across the
country.”
In the wake of the Orlando
shooting that claimed 49 lives,
Democrats mounted a 15-hour
ilibuster in the U.S. Senate
to try to break a stalemate on
a gun bill — just as attempts
to revive legislation have fol-
lowed other recent mass shoot-
ings, though with little effect.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a
moderate Republican, likened
it to “Groundhog Day,” while
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat
from Florida, said he couldn’t
see how even the NRA could
object to a bill such as the one
being considered, to keep those
on a terrorist watch list from
purchasing guns.
A look at gun ownership
and attitudes about gun con-
trol in the United States:
• Gun ownership has
decreased among all age,
race and gender groups since
1973. At its peak in that time
frame, in 1977, 50.4 per-
cent of households had guns.
By 2014, just 31 percent of
households did.
• The drop was most pro-
nounced among younger
Americans. Among 18- to
25-year-olds, the ownership
rate fell from 45 percent to
13 percent.
• Black gun owner-
ship has dropped 75 per-
cent since 1973; white gun
ownership has decreased 48
percent.
• In 2014, about one-
fourth of whites, 26 percent,
owned a gun. Among blacks,
the rate was 10 percent.
• Gun owners are more
likely to vote. In 2004, 31
percent of gun owners said
they voted, versus 17 per-
cent of those without guns.
In 2008, 23 percent of gun
owners reported voting,
compared with 17 percent
of non-gun owners. In 2012,
it was 25 percent versus 19
percent.
There is little expectation
that the Democratic bill will
pass. “They are accustomed to
getting their way around here,”
Nelson said of the NRA.
The NRA did not respond to
an interview request.
Gross sees signs for hope for
gun control supporters. Social
media, he said, has helped get
out a message that his side,
for years, struggled to spread
against the deep pockets of the
gun lobby. The Democratic
presidential primary, in which
Hillary Clinton made gun con-
trol a lagship issue in differ-
entiating herself from Ber-
nie Sanders, showed it’s not an
untouchable political issue. And
changing national demograph-
ics could further bolster the case
of those who favor gun restric-
tions, because minorities are
comprising a larger share of the
populace and are less likely to
own guns.
Toxic debate
Still, this debate remains one
of the more toxic in America.
Winkler, the UCLA pro-
fessor, knows divisiveness. He
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• When asked which is
more important, gun control
or protecting gun rights, big
gains have been recorded in
those choosing gun rights,
particularly in the past 15
years, leaving Americans
nearly evenly split. Those
favoring gun rights • 29 per-
cent of the population in
2000 • grew to 47 percent
by last year. Those saying
gun control is more import-
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to 50 percent in the same
period.
• Though a big gap still
exists between blacks and
whites, both groups have
moved to valuing gun rights
over gun control. In 1999,
17 percent of blacks favored
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compared with 34 percent in
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76 percent in 2014. Among
Democrats, the increase was
much smaller, from 19 per-
cent to 28 percent.
Source: Pew Research
Center, General Social Sur-
vey by NORC at the Univer-
sity of Chicago
worked on the defense teams of
O.J. Simpson and Michael Jack-
son. His research has prompted
impassioned debates on issues
from free speech to campaign
inance.
“Nothing has ever come
close to the level of vitriol I have
seen with guns,” he said. “Both
sides feel that life and death is at
stake.”
The fear expressed by many
gun owners that the govern-
ment seeks to coniscate their
weapons harkens back to the
time of the Constitution’s fram-
ers. When James Madison irst
proposed the right to bear arms,
Waldman said, it was specif-
ically seen as a right for gun
ownership in the service of
militias, which were seen as a
bulwark against the possible
tyranny and risk of overreach
from a central government.
That rationale for gun owner-
ship still exists among many
today.
“People were worrying
about overreach from Washing-
ton when it was George Wash-
ington and not Washington,
D.C.,” Waldman said.
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