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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 13, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Friday, May 13, 2016 OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Tip of the hat; kick in the pants A tip of the hat to the Hermiston High School and Echo trap shooting teams, two of three founding clubs of a statewide league. The school-sanctioned club in Hermiston has 21 members and is in the middle of a season that inishes with a June 25 championship. Such teams are common in parts of the Midwest, and used to be fairly common throughout the West. But nowadays, it seems like guns and schools go together like oil and water — and for good reason. Yet the goal is education. And education about irearms is important to making them a safer part of our world. Clubs like these, though only ledgling, offer an avenue to teach gun safety and connect more students with the extra-curricular activities that stimulate social interaction, school pride, and the joy of learning. It’s a natural continuation of the youth 4-H and hunter’s safety classes already a part of Eastern Oregon culture. Shoot straight, Bulldogs and Cougars. A tip of the hat to educator Mark Rouska and the Irrigon community for rallying behind Jose Adan Guardado’s quest for a new, high-tech wheelchair. Adan was born with cerebral palsy which limits his physical capabilities, and his aging power chair wasn’t keeping up with his brain. He repairs computers at the school and hopes to develop a career as a computer technician, but was slowed down by the inicky machine that limited his movement. So the teen started a GoFundMe campaign to get a new chair from Nu Motion, one that would respond to his direction more precisely and stay powered up longer. Life skills teacher Rouska helped propel the movement, and because he has stage 4 lung cancer knew time may be short to see the goal through. A wide network of donations and $5,000 from the chair’s manufacturer made that dream a reality last week. It’s an uplifting story that reminds us the huge good that happens in small towns. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Gun technology can keep children from iring weapons The Portland Press Herald (Maine) T wenty-three times so far this year, according to The Washington Post, a child age 3 or younger has found and ired a gun. In 11 of these shootings, somebody — usually the child — was killed. Incidents like these are shocking, tragic and largely preventable. But that means fully, and inally, committing ourselves to policies and technology that help keep irearms out of kids’ hands. The igures presented by the Post on May 1 show an acceleration in the pace of toddler shootings. However, they’re just a small part of the gun violence involving children in our country. In 2015, at least 265 people in the U.S. were unintentionally shot by children under 18. Eighty-three died, including 41 of the children who carried out the accidental shootings. There are proven ways to stanch this epidemic. For example: Twenty-eight states have child access prevention laws, which, to varying degrees, hold gun owners liable if a child accesses their irearms. Over 800 injuries were prevented and $37 million in medical costs were saved in 2001 in 10 of the states that have these laws, according to a 2005 study for the National Bureau for Economic Research. On the technical side, guns are now being designed with features that prevent the wrong person from pulling the trigger, such as biometric sensors (like ingerprint readers) and “James Bond”-style grip recognition. One such “smart gun,” the iP1, requires the single authorized user to enter a ive-digit PIN into a special watch before iring. (The code is good for eight hours at a time.) But the company that makes the iP1 hasn’t been able to sell it because of boycott pressure from the National Rile Association and its allies. Invoking fears that mandating gun-safety technology will pave the way for greater gun control, gun-rights advocates have also come out against a recently announced White House plan to use federal funds to help develop smart guns and to subsidize their purchase by police agencies. President Obama should focus on ighting terrorism, an NRA spokeswoman declared after the president’s announcement last week. But the threat that militants present to Americans must be put into context. Twenty Americans died at the hands of potential or suspected terrorists in Paris, San Bernardino and Chattanooga in 2015. Accidental shootings by children, on the other hand, took over four times as many American lives last year. When it comes to protecting children versus protecting rapid access to guns, our priorities should be clear. Most Americans want safer irearms— just as they support policies to require that guns be stored out of children’s reach. It’s time for this silent majority to speak up and demand action. Obama’s gorgeous goodbye I with whom he has real credibility. n this twilight of his presidency, “We must expand our moral Barack Obama is unlikely to deliver much in the way of meaningful imaginations,” he told black students at legislation. Howard, imploring them to recognize But he’s giving us a pointed, “the middle-aged white guy who you powerful civics lesson. may think has all the advantages, but Consider his speech to new over the last several decades has seen graduates of Howard University last his world upended by economic and weekend. While it brimmed with cultural and technological change, and Frank the usual kudos for hard work, it feels powerless to stop it. You got to Bruni also bristled with caveats about the get in his head, too.” Comment mistakes that he sees some young Just two weeks earlier, at a people making. town-hall-style meeting in London, He chided them for demonizing enemies he volunteered a critique of the Black Lives and silencing opponents. He cautioned Matter movement, saying that once “elected them against a sense of oficials or people who are grievance too exaggerated in a position to start bringing and an outrage bereft of about change are ready to perspective. “If you had sit down with you, then you to choose a time to be, can’t just keep on yelling at in the words of Lorraine them.” Hansberry, ‘young, gifted Another reason to listen and black’ in America, you to Obama is the accuracy would choose right now,” and eloquence with which he said. “To deny how far he’s diagnosing current we’ve come would do a ills. In Illinois he noted that disservice to the cause of while ugly partisanship has justice.” always existed, it’s fed in He was by no means our digital era by voters’ telling them to be satisied, ability to curate information and he wasn’t talking only from only those news or even chiely to them. He sources and social-media was talking to all of us — to feeds that echo and amplify America — and saying: their prejudices. enough. Enough with a “We can choose our own kind of identity politics that facts,” he lamented. “We can shove aside common don’t have a common basis purpose. Enough with a for what’s true and what’s partisanship so caustic that it bleeds into not.” Advocacy groups often make matters hatred. worse, he added, by “keeping their members Enough with such deafening sound and agitated as much as possible, assured of the blinding fury in our public debate. They make righteousness of their cause.” for entertainment, not enlightenment, and At Howard, Obama insisted that change stand in the way of progress. “requires listening to those with whom you His remarks at Howard were an extension disagree, and being prepared to compromise.” of those in his inal State of the Union address “If you think that the only way forward in January and of those to the Illinois General is to be as uncompromising as possible, you Assembly in February, nine years to the day will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy after he announced his history-making bid a certain moral purity, but you’re not going for the presidency. The Illinois speech, wise to get what you want,” he continued. “So and gorgeous, received less attention than it don’t try to shut folks out. Don’t try to shut deserved. them down, no matter how much you might “We’ve got to build a better politics — one disagree with them.” that’s less of a spectacle and more of a battle At this late point, his message isn’t a of ideas,” he said then. Otherwise, he warned, self-serving one about the political climate “Extreme voices ill the void.” This current that he personally wants to operate in and presidential campaign has borne him out. beneit from. Obama detractors and skeptics probably It’s about the climate that would serve hear in all of this a professorial haughtiness everyone best. If it draws attention to the that has plagued him and alienated them improvements that he pledged but couldn’t before. And there’s legitimate disagreement accomplish, he’s OK with that. It still needs about the degree to which he has been an saying. agent as well as a casualty of the poisoned And so he’s fashioning this blunt, soulful environment he rues. His administration’s goodbye, a relection on our troubled actions haven’t always been as high-minded democracy that, I fear, will be lost in the din of as his words. the Trump-Clinton death match. It brings him But we should all listen to him nonetheless, full circle, from the audacity to the tenacity of for several reasons. hope. One is that he’s not just taking jabs at ■ opponents. He’s issuing challenges to groups Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for The — African-Americans, college students — New York Times since June 2011, joined the from whom he has drawn strong support and newspaper in 1995. Enough with the deafening sound and blinding fury in our public debate. They make for entertainment, not enlightenment, and stand in the way of progress. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.