OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
Repeal the Second Amendment
By BRET STEPHENS
The New York Times
I
The Daily Astorian
Dave Pearson, the deputy director of the Columbia River Maritime
Museum, has been hired as executive director of the motor sports
museum World of Speed in Wilsonville.
• Columbia River Maritime Museum Deputy Director
Dave Pearson, who is leaving the museum later this month to
become executive director at World of Speed, a motor sports
museum in Wilsonville. Pearson has been with the mari-
time museum for 22 years and also serves as president of the
city’s Planning Commission. Museum Executive Director Sam
Johnson called Pearson a “mainstay of this institution” and said
the museum will miss him “extraordinarily.” The museum will
conduct a going-away party for Pearson on Oct. 18 that is open
to the public.
• Kerry Strickland, a Knappa mother who founded the non-
profit Jordan’s Hope for Recovery after her son died from a her-
oin overdose two years ago. Strickland recently attended Gov.
Kate Brown’s ceremonial signing of a new law that improves
access to anti-overdose drugs and is becoming a visible face in
helping state and local leaders develop drug addiction policy.
After the bill signing in Salem in September, Strickland attended
the first meeting of Brown’s opioid task force. She said the sign-
ing and the meeting sent a good signal that the state is commit-
ted to fighting the opioid epidemic that has led to thousands of
deaths.
• NW Natural, which last month partnered with the kick-
off campaign for the Clatsop County United Way, social ser-
vice agencies and emergency service groups to conduct a fami-
ly-friendly emergency preparedness event at the Astoria Armory.
While children stayed busy with an assortment of games, gym-
nastics and face painting, parents were able to learn about how to
keep children safe during emergencies. About 250 people turned
out for the event.
• Four Seaside Police officers, who were recognized last
week by Police Chief Dave Ham for their handling of a dramatic
mental health crisis situation in August. Police Sgt. Johannes
Korpela and officers Matthew Brown, Elise Parkman and
Nathan Tapper were recognized for responding and calming a
mentally disturbed person who was in crisis with a firearm on
Aug. 23, Ham said. “Those officers handled that very profes-
sionally and with respect and dignity,” he said. Ham added that
after calming the person, the officers were able to peacefully dis-
arm him and take him into custody to get the mental health treat-
ment he needed.
• The Astor Elementary Parent Teacher Organization,
which recently raised $2,650 in a rummage sale and raffle to buy
new books for the school’s library.
CALLOUTS
• The Oregon Department of Human Services, which
according to a state audit needs to take immediate action to
improve safety and the well-being for about 13,000 elderly
low-income people and those with disabilities in its Consumer-
Employed Provider program. According to Oregon Secretary
of State’s Office auditors, the program gives seniors and those
with disabilities the opportunity to safely remain in their homes
to receive the care they need from caregivers of their choice. The
choice comes with requirements. Clients are responsible for hir-
ing, training, supervising and dismissing their home-care work-
ers, who are often relatives. But the auditors found shortcom-
ings. Some clients, like those with Alzheimer’s, may not able
to successfully manage their home-care workers, and the pro-
gram does not ensure home-care workers are properly trained.
Additionally, auditors said excessive workloads and lack of
good data inhibit case managers’ monitoring abilities, Without
addressing these issues, those in the program may be at greater
risk of fraud, neglect or abuse, auditors said.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about? Let
us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a look.
have never understood the con-
servative fetish for the Second
Amendment.
From a
law-and-order
standpoint, more
guns means more
murder. “States
with higher rates
of gun ownership
had disproportion-
ately large numbers of deaths from
firearm-related homicides,” noted
one exhaustive 2013 study in the
American Journal of Public Health.
From a personal-safety stand-
point, more guns means less safety.
The FBI counted a total of 268
“justifiable homicides” by private
citizens involving firearms in 2015;
that is, felons killed in the course of
committing a felony. Yet that same
year, there were 489 “unintentional
firearms deaths” in the United
States, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Between 77 and 141 of those killed
were children.
From a national-security stand-
point, the amendment’s suggestion
that a “well-regulated militia” is
“necessary to the security of a free
State,” is quaint. The Minutemen
that will deter Vladimir Putin and
Kim Jong Un are based in missile
silos in Minot, North Dakota,
not farmhouses in Lexington,
Massachusetts.
From a personal liberty
standpoint, the idea that an armed
citizenry is the ultimate check on
the ambitions and encroachments
of government power is curious.
The Whiskey Rebellion of the
1790s, the New York draft riots of
1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of
1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981
— does any serious conservative
think of these as great moments in
Second Amendment activism?
And now we have the relatively
new and now ubiquitous “active
shooter” phenomenon, something
that remains extremely rare in the
rest of the world. Conservatives
often say that the right response
to these horrors is to do more on
the mental-health front. Yet by all
accounts Stephen Paddock would
not have raised an eyebrow with a
mental-health professional before
he murdered 58 people in Las
Vegas last week.
What might have raised a red
flag? I’m not the first pundit to
point out that if a “Mohammad
Paddock” had purchased dozens of
firearms and thousands of rounds
of ammunition and then checked
himself into a suite at the Mandalay
Bay with direct views to a nearby
music festival, somebody at the
local FBI field office would have
noticed.
Given all of this, why do liberals
keep losing the gun control debate?
Maybe it’s because they argue
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
A device called a ‘bump stock’ is attached to a semi-automatic rifle
at the Gun Vault store and shooting range in South Jordan, Utah. The
National Rifle Association announced its support for regulating the
devices that can effectively convert semi-automatic rifles into fully
automated weapons and that were apparently used in the Las Vegas
massacre to lethal effect.
their case badly and — let’s face
it — in bad faith. Democratic
politicians routinely profess their
fidelity to the Second Amendment
— or rather, “a nuanced reading”
of it — with all the conviction of
Barack Obama’s support for tradi-
tional marriage, circa 2008. People
recognize lip service for what it is.
Then there are the endless
liberal errors of fact. There is no
“gun-show loophole” per se; it’s
a private-sale loophole, in other
words the right to sell your own
stuff. The civilian AR-15 is not a
true “assault rifle,” and banning
such rifles would have little effect
on the overall murder rate, since
most homicides are committed with
handguns. It’s not true that 40 per-
cent of gun owners buy without a
background check; the real number
is closer to one-fifth.
The National Rifle Association
does not have Republican “balls in
a money clip,” as Jimmy Kimmel
put it the other night. The NRA has
donated a paltry $3,533,294 to all
current members of Congress since
1998, according to The Washington
Post, equivalent to about three
months of Kimmel’s salary. The
NRA doesn’t need to buy influence:
It’s powerful because it’s popular.
Nor will it do to follow the
“Australian model” of a gun buy-
back program, which has shown
poor results in the United States
and makes little sense in a country
awash with hundreds of millions
of weapons. Keeping guns out of
the hands of mentally ill people is
a sensible goal, but due process is
still owed to the potentially insane.
Background checks for private
gun sales are another fine idea,
though its effects on homicides
will be negligible: Guns recovered
by police are rarely in the hands
of their legal owners, a 2016 study
found.
In fact, the more closely one
looks at what passes for “common
sense” gun laws, the more feckless
they appear. Americans who claim
to be outraged by gun crimes
should want to do something more
than tinker at the margins of a legal
regime that most of the developed
world rightly considers nuts. They
should want to change it fundamen-
tally and permanently.
There is only one way to do this:
Repeal the Second Amendment.
Repealing the amendment
may seem like political “Mission:
Impossible” today, but in the era of
same-sex marriage it’s worth recall-
ing that most great causes begin as
improbable ones. Gun ownership
should never be outlawed, just
as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or
Australia. But it doesn’t need a
blanket Constitutional protection,
either. The 46,445 murder victims
killed by gunfire in the United
States between 2012 and 2016
didn’t need to perish so that gun
enthusiasts can go on fantasizing
that “Red Dawn” is the fate that
soon awaits us.
Donald Trump will likely get
one more Supreme Court nomi-
nation, or two or three, before he
leaves office, guaranteeing a pro-
gun court for another generation.
Expansive interpretations of the
right to bear arms will be the law of
the land — until the “right” itself
ceases to be.
Some conservatives will insist
that the Second Amendment is
fundamental to the structure of
American liberty. They will cite
James Madison, who noted in the
Federalist Papers that in Europe
“the governments are afraid to trust
the people with arms.” America
was supposed to be different, and
better.
I wonder what Madison would
have to say about that today,
when more than twice as many
Americans perished last year
at the hands of their fellows as
died in battle during the entire
Revolutionary War. My guess:
Take the guns — or at least the
presumptive right to them — away.
The true foundation of American
exceptionalism should be our
capacity for moral and constitu-
tional renewal, not our instinct for
self-destruction.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
A simple protest
I
don’t get it. Some people can’t
comprehend the simplest of
ideas. I’m talking about the NFL
protest. The flag itself is a piece
of cloth, an abstract thing, with
no meaning in and of itself. It’s
importance comes from what it
represents, the meaning behind it.
Most people would say it rep-
resents the freedom we enjoy in
America, but as soon as people
express that freedom in a peace-
ful, nonviolent way, a lot of people
get their panties in a twist, instead
of thinking that’s why I’m glad I
live in America, instead of another
place where people get thrown
in jail or killed for controversial
ideas.
You don’t have to agree with
the protest itself, but you should
support their right to do it. Now
some people might say, why
don’t they do it someplace else, on
their own time. In any protest,
the whole idea is to get your mes-
sage across to the largest audience
possible. What better way than
at a football game?
They are not stopping the game
from being played. The national
anthem will happen whether
there’s a protest or not. Now if they
refused to play a game they were
paid to play, that would be a whole
other story. I would understand
why people would be upset.
The First Amendment was not
written to support widely accepted
ideas. Widely accepted ideas need
no protection.
LAURA RUSSELL
Astoria