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OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, June 17, 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 kick in the pants to Governor Kate Brown for turning down the
opportunity to take part in an Oregon Newspaper Publisher’s Association-
sponsored debate with Republican
candidate Bud Pierce.
A governor’s debate at the ONPA
conference, held this year in Silverton July
21-22, is a tradition during gubernatorial
election years. The only race in the last
30 years that hasn’t included a debate at
the conference was in 2010, when Chris
Dudley declined.
Brown’s reason for skipping out isn’t
speciic — she’s going to be “focused on
her oficial duties” — but her campaign
manager says she is excited for debates,
forums and campaign events in the fall.
It could be that Brown has yet to decide her oficial position on some of
Oregon’s hot issues this cycle, including the proposed Owyhee Canyonlands
national monument, the dangerous PERS spiral or the immense gross
receipts tax coming to the ballot. All have surely been in the front of her
mind for months now, and if she’s not yet prepared to explain and defend her
position, it seems a month of preparation would be enough.
Or possibly Brown’s clashes with the media in her 15 months in
ofice have left her uninterested in making such a defense in this venue.
Newspapers in particular have been critical of failed promises of
transparency from her ofice, and disappointed in her unwillingness to
answer direct questions about controversial issues.
Brown surely has more to lose than Pierce by entering a debate at this
stage of the game. He’s a political newcomer from the minority party
looking to hold the current regime accountable, while she would beneit
by skipping straight to November and letting our blue state extend the
Democrats’ reign another term by default.
In order to make an educated decision come November, voters need to
start studying the candidates and issues as soon as possible. It’s not too late
for Brown to clear a few hours on a Friday afternoon from her “oficial
duties” to come make an early pitch to the state’s journalists. We’d go so far
as to say that should be an oficial duty for a sitting governor.
A tip of the hat to a plan to bring seasonal hydropower to McKay Dam
south of Pendleton.
Bill Hampton, a registered professional engineer with a long family
connection to Pendleton, has proposed
installing a relatively small 1.9-megawatt
generator and powerhouse at the dam.
It’s not the irst time it has been proposed,
and that’s because it’s a good idea. A lot of
water lowing through a small space creates
a lot of power, and that power makes energy
we can use to heat our homes and light our
rooms.
The idea doesn’t come without problems
— water release from the dam isn’t consistent
and farmers and irrigators must be the top priority. But if their needs can be
met and we can create some additional energy while doing it, we should.
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
Don’t attack guns, attack ISIS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
o many dead. So many wounded.
So many noble but unrealistic ideas
about what to do about it.
It didn’t take long after Orlando for
the bumper-sticker thinking to show
up again. (It will be a while, maybe a
long while, before just saying the word
“Orlando” doesn’t automatically conjure
what happened over the weekend. The
way saying “Columbine” or “Sandy
Hook” still summons the demons.)
Get rid of guns! or something to
that effect was all the rage, and we
mean rage, on Facebook come Monday
morning. Sometimes the post would
simply ask “When will it all end?”
before the nation goes Great Britain on
its guns. Or how many have to die, or
have we inally learned the lesson, or
why can’t we do this simple thing?
It’s a simple question. In more
ways than one. There are more guns
in the United States than people in it.
If the government were somehow to
require — tomorrow — that everybody
turn their guns in to the government,
what percentage do you think would
actually do it? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?
If 90 percent of all Americans were
to turn in their guns tomorrow, that’d
leave tens of millions of guns still on
the streets. (And, for the record, nobody
in government — or running to be in
it — is calling for anything like such
massive coniscation. And likely won’t.
A presidential election season is no time
for Big Ideas.)
Magazine size? There are more
magazines in this nation than guns. How
long, how many hundreds of years,
would it take for the ones already in
Uncle Bob’s closet to break, or rust, or
be lost in a house ire, or be turned in by
his grandkids?
Change the Constitution? How,
exactly? The Second Amendment isn’t
going anywhere. And won’t be. We
had a conversation a few months back
about this very thing. If every single
S
registered voter in New York state were
to vote in favor of some change to the
Constitution, Arkansas could offset
that vote with 51 percent of the vote
here. A small state like Louisiana could
counteract California. Mississippi could
nullify Illinois. Then you’re just at 50
percent. To change the Constitution,
you’d need 3/4 of the states to approve.
Folks, do we have that sort of time?
Do we debate changing the
Constitution for the next decade, and put
up with dozens of more terrorist attacks?
Do we spend years trying to pass
(mostly ineffective) gun laws through a
divided Congress while the enemy plans
more Orlandos? Do we debate magazine
size while nutcases are illing their
trunks with banana clips for the next trip
to the movie house, nightclub or school?
The best answer to what’s happening
might have been suggested by the senior
senator from Arkansas, John Boozman,
who usually doesn’t sound this angry.
But Orlando was enough to get even the
Hon. and honorable John Boozman up in
arms, along with the rest of us:
“ISIS and radical Islamic terrorists
have repeatedly called on supporters to
attack Americans here at home,” he said.
He sounded angry, and he was joined
by a lot of people, and not just in this
country. Some of us got angrier each
time the death toll clicked up Sunday.
The United States must go to the
enemy, and defeat him. If we don’t
defeat him, and clean him out of his safe
places like so many rats out of an attic,
he’ll continue to recruit for ops in this
country. There’s scarcely a doubt that
Americans are weary of war after Iraq
and Afghanistan and all these years of
ighting. But the enemy doesn’t seem to
be tiring. And he’s recruiting.
We must defeat them. That’s the
answer. One-sentence posts on social
media may make a body feel good, but
such bumper-sticker thinking isn’t going
to stop the next terror attack.
Defeat them. Where they live. As
hard as it is to do so.
Some extremists ire guns;
other extremists promote guns
O
that 40 percent of gun transfers didn’t
ver the past two decades,
even involve a background check.
Canada has had eight mass
We can’t prevent every gun death
shootings. Just so far this
any more than we can prevent every
month, the United States has already
car accident, and the challenge is
had 20.
particularly acute with homegrown
Canada has a much smaller
terrorists like the one in Orlando. But
population, of course, and the criteria
that researchers used for each country
experts estimate that a serious effort to
are slightly different, but that still says Nicholas reduce gun violence might reduce the
something important about public
Kristof toll by one-third, which would be more
safety.
than 10,000 lives saved a year.
Comment
Could it be, as Donald Trump
The Orlando killer would have
suggests, that the peril comes
been legally barred from buying lawn
from admitting Muslims? On the contrary,
darts, because they were banned as unsafe.
Canadians are safe despite having been far
He would have been unable to drive a car that
more hospitable to Muslim refugees: Canada
didn’t pass a safety inspection or that lacked
has admitted more than 27,000 Syrian
insurance. He couldn’t have purchased a black
refugees since November, some 10 times the
water gun without an orange tip — because
number the United States has.
that would have been too dangerous.
More broadly, Canada’s
But it’s not too dangerous
population is 3.2 percent
to allow the sale of an
Muslim, while the United
assault rile without even a
States is about 1 percent
background check?
Muslim — yet Canada
If we’re trying to prevent
doesn’t have massacres like
carnage like that of Orlando,
the one we just experienced
we need to be vigilant not
at a gay nightclub in
only about iniltration by
Orlando, Florida, or the
the Islamic State, and not
one in December in San
only about U.S. citizens
Bernardino, California.
poisoned into committing
So perhaps the problem
acts of terrorism. We also
isn’t so much Muslims out
need to be vigilant about
of control but guns out of
National Rile Association-
control.
type extremism that allows
Look, I grew up on
guns to be sold without
a farm with guns. One
background checks.
morning when I was 10,
It’s staggering that
we awoke at dawn to hear
Congress doesn’t see a
our chickens squawking frantically and saw
problem with allowing people on terror watch
a fox trotting away with one of our hens in
lists to buy guns: In each of the past three
its mouth. My dad grabbed his .308 rile,
years, more than 200 people on the terror
opened the window and ired twice. The fox
watch list have been allowed to purchase
was unhurt but dropped its breakfast and led.
guns. We empower the Islamic State when
The hen picked herself up, shook her feathers
we permit acolytes like the Orlando killer,
indignantly and walked back to the barn. So in investigated repeatedly as a terrorist threat,
the right context, guns have their uses.
to buy a Sig Sauer MCX and a Glock 17
The problem is that we make no serious
handgun on consecutive days.
effort to keep irearms out of the hands of
A great majority of Muslims are peaceful,
violent people. A few data points:
and it’s unfair to blame Islam for terrorist
— More Americans have died from guns,
attacks like the one in Orlando. But it is
including suicides, since just 1970 than died in important to hold accountable Gulf states like
all the wars in U.S. history going back to the
Saudi Arabia that are wellsprings of religious
American Revolution.
zealotry, intolerance and fanaticism. We
— The Civil War marks by far the most
should also hold accountable our own political
savage period of warfare in U.S. history. But
igures who exploit tragic events to sow
more Americans are now killed from guns
bigotry. And, yes, that means Donald Trump.
annually, again including suicides, than were
When Trump scapegoats Muslims, that also
killed by guns on average each year during
damages our own security by bolstering the
the Civil War (when many of the deaths were
us-versus-them narrative of the Islamic State.
from disease, not guns).
The lesson of history is that extremists on one
— In the United States, more preschoolers
side invariably empower extremists on the
up through age 4 are shot dead each year than
other.
police oficers are.
So by all means, Muslims around the world
Canada has put in place measures that
should stand up to their fanatics sowing hatred
make it more dificult for a dangerous person
and intolerance — and we Americans should
to acquire a gun, with a focus not so much
stand up to our own extremists doing just the
on banning weapons entirely (the AR-15 is
same.
available after undergoing safety training
■
and a screening) as on limiting who can
Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and
obtain one. In the United States, we lack
cherry farm in Yamhill. Kristof, a columnist
even universal background checks, and new
for The New York Times since 2001, won the
Harvard research to be published soon found
Pulitzer Prize two times, in 1990 and 2006.
More Americans
have died from
guns since 1970
than died in
all the wars in
U.S. history
going back to
the American
Revolution.
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.