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.