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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 7, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, October 7, 2017 OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OUR VIEW Kids these days American colleges have long been the foundation on which higher education is built. bastions of learning and growth, Each said they have updated where thoughts and ideas are imparted, debated and strengthened. policies and procedures, and have tried to engage and challenge It’s only natural that academia gets tied up with politics, where many of students during orientation — as our philosophical ideals meet their soon as they arrive on campus. “We all hear about how higher practical applications. education is coddling,” said Eastern Donald Trump is unpopular with young people and Oregon University the college educated, Tom Insko. “Whoever is president so it is little surprise “At EOU we’re not that supporters of to coddle offended has a looking our current president our students ... we feel outnumbered right to speak want to create a safe in many classrooms environment for and college greens. also. And they you to face these What is surprising challenging issues need to know head on.” and disappointing, however, is the anger Oregon State how to do it.” University President and violence that have —Ed Ray, Ed Ray said his erupted against those President of school has also who have professed Oregon State University increased discussion. their support. Right-wing media “You need to be gleefully runs video of able to engage in the anarchists mobs that gathered in conversation that may make you Berkeley and at Evergreen College uncomfortable,” said Ray. “That’s to protest right-wing speakers (some, how you harden and develop your own ideas, and learn how to in white supremacist and neo-Nazi, fact speak up against things that others merely conservative are awful.” He said it’s worth Republicans), offering it as proof remembering that “whoever is that the left has gone loony. Recent offended has a right to speak also. polling data have shown that an And they need to know how to do it, increasing number of millennials and they need to know how to do it — in a recent Pew Study it was in a civil way.” 40 percent — believe that speech Thompson said the University should be restricted to prevent of Oregon also has its eye on the people from saying offensive things free speech/hate speech spectrum. about minority groups. He believes that students — and College presidents know the stakes. They know that their campus young people in general — should get more credit than they do. He is always one incident away from doesn’t see coddled kids wanting online infamy. Or that an incident a protection, he sees young people that thousand miles away, propelled by social media, may end up in protests want to be involved, invested and committed to improving their lives on their doorstep in a matter of and communities. hours. “I see kids that are connected, The presidents of Eastern Oregon that want to make a difference ... University and Oregon State and they’ve done it high school University, as well as University of already,” he said. “They’re kind of Oregon vice president for student questioning the gray-haired folks services Roger J. Thompson, in the room, looking around and gathered in Pendleton last month. It wondering ‘What kind of world are was purportedly for the Pendleton you leaving us?’” Round-Up, but we’ve always As newspaper editors, we are thought they come every September by definition supportive of First to chat with the East Oregonian Amendment and free speech. We are editorial board. also supportive of the kind of debate This year, the conversation required to strengthen that support in turned to issues of free speech, and others. how their campuses are supporting 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 Showing signs of housing progress n July 2016, the city of First, a private developer has Pendleton concluded the purchased all of the remaining second formal analysis of its lots in the Sunridge Estates area housing market in five years. and will begin constructing The study noted that single family homes at the rate thousands of people commute of about ten per year. Pendleton into Pendleton each day to Affordable Housing, LLC work, and a large number of will also begin constructing jobs stand unfilled. Numerous 20 new apartments this year at John suggestions for more and better Pendleton Heights, with another Turner housing were forwarded to the 20 planned for next year. The Comment city council, who adopted them city also participated in a into action. preliminary design meeting with One of the developers interested suggestions was in building another to host a housing apartment complex conference to near Southgate, invite developers to and construction on Pendleton and show additional duplexes them the benefits of has already started on building more housing SW 12th Street. units in Pendleton. The planning On August 30, the commission will city — along with 13 sponsoring begin looking at rules for building organizations — hosted a day-long along Southwest Court Street in an area housing conference at the Pendleton called the River Quarter District. The Convention Center. The purpose of the current regulations for this area require conference was to familiarize builders, multi-level, mixed-use buildings with investors, sub-contractors and property an emphasis on architectural standards owners with some of the opportunities met with the requirement of commercial to build more housing in Pendleton. uses downstairs and residential spaces Each of the 90 participants received upstairs. a copy of the housing study, maps of Since these regulations were adopted developable properties, regulations, in 2010, few developers have shown contact information for key city officials interest in building in the River Quarter, and development fees. prompting the city to reassess the The city has made a lot of progress existing rules to make new development in identifying existing lots near utility more realistic. Residents of Pendleton services that might be used for the are invited to bring their ideas on construction of housing. While no housing to the monthly meetings of the developer has yet to put forth a plan for housing committee, usually held on the a large housing subdivision, a number afternoon of the first Tuesday of each of things are happening in Pendleton month. that make city officials believe we ■ are making progress on our housing John Turner is the mayor of shortage. Pendleton. I 90 participated in Aug. 30 housing conference. Repeal the Second Amendment I have never understood the one-fifth. conservative fetish for the Second The National Rifle Association Amendment. does not have Republican “balls in From a law-and-order standpoint, a money clip,” as Jimmy Kimmel more guns means more murder. “States put it the other night. The NRA has with higher rates of gun ownership donated a paltry $3,533,294 to all had disproportionately large numbers current members of Congress since of deaths from firearm-related 1998, according to The Washington Bret homicides,” noted one exhaustive Post, equivalent to about three months 2013 study in the American Journal of Stephens of Kimmel’s salary. The NRA doesn’t Public Health. need to buy influence: It’s powerful Comment From a personal-safety standpoint, because it’s popular. more guns means less safety. The FBI Nor will it do to follow the counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” “Australian model” of a gun buyback program, which has shown poor results in by private citizens involving firearms in the United States and makes little sense in a 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of country awash with hundreds of millions of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there weapons. Keeping guns out of the hands of were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for mentally ill people is a sensible goal, but due Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those process is still owed to the potentially insane. Background checks for private gun sales are killed were children. another fine idea, though its From a national- security standpoint, the effects on homicides will be Amendment’s suggestion negligible: Guns recovered that a “well-regulated by police are rarely in the militia” is “necessary to the hands of their legal owners, security of a free State,” a 2016 study found. is quaint. The Minutemen In fact, the more closely that will deter Vladimir one looks at what passes Putin and Kim Jong Un for “common sense” gun are based in missile silos in laws, the more feckless Minot, North Dakota, not they appear. Americans farmhouses in Lexington, who claim to be outraged Massachusetts. by gun crimes should want From a personal liberty to do something more than standpoint, the idea that tinker at the margins of a an armed citizenry is legal regime that most of the the ultimate check on the ambitions and developed world rightly considers nuts. They encroachments of government power is should want to change it fundamentally and curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, permanently. the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal There is only one way to do this: Repeal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery the Second Amendment. of 1981 — does any serious conservative Repealing the Amendment may seem like think of these as great moments in Second political “Mission: Impossible” today, but Amendment activism? in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth And now we have the relatively new and recalling that most great causes begin as now ubiquitous “active shooter” phenomenon, improbable ones. Gun ownership should something that remains extremely rare in never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed the rest of the world. Conservatives often in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a say that the right response to these horrors blanket Constitutional protection, either. The is to do more on the mental-health front. Yet 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the by all accounts Stephen Paddock would not United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t have raised an eyebrow with a mental-health need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go professional before he murdered 58 people in on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that Las Vegas last week. soon awaits us. What might have raised a red flag? Donald Trump will likely get one more I’m not the first pundit to point out that if Supreme Court nomination, or two or a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased three, before he leaves office, guaranteeing dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of a pro-gun court for another generation. ammunition and then checked himself into a Expansive interpretations of the right to bear suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to arms will be the law of the land — until the a nearby music festival, somebody at the local “right” itself ceases to be. FBI field office would have noticed. Some conservatives will insist that the Given all of this, why do liberals keep Second Amendment is fundamental to the losing the gun control debate? structure of American liberty. They will cite Maybe it’s because they argue their case James Madison, who noted in the Federalist badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Papers that in Europe “the governments are Democratic politicians routinely profess afraid to trust the people with arms.” America their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or was supposed to be different, and better. rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all I wonder what Madison would have to the conviction of Barack Obama’s support say about that today, when more than twice for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People as many Americans perished last year at the recognize lip service for what it is. hands of their fellows as died in battle during Then there are the endless liberal errors the entire Revolutionary War. My guess: of fact. There is no “gun-show loophole” Take the guns — or at least the presumptive per se; it’s a private-sale loophole, in other right to them — away. The true foundation words the right to sell your own stuff. The of American exceptionalism should be our civilian AR-15 is not a true “assault rifle,” and capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, banning such rifles would have little effect on not our instinct for self-destruction. the overall murder rate, since most homicides ■ are committed with handguns. It’s not true Bret Stephens won a Pulitzer Prize for that 40 percent of gun owners buy without a commentary in 2013. He began working as a background check; the real number is closer to columnist at The New York Times in April. The more closely one looks at what passes for “common sense” gun laws, the more feckless they appear.
