Letters to the Editor - Lakeville Journal - 3-22-18

Support a bear hunting season

Over the past 20 years, the black bears have become more and more of a nuisance in northwestern Connecticut. They are causing property damage and occasionally killing livestock. A few months ago, a bear killed a donkey in Watertown. A donkey is not a small animal.

I do not hunt, and I love wildlife as much as the next person, but I believe the time has come to establish a limited hunting season for bears in Connecticut. This is not to eradicate the bears, but to bring their numbers to a controllable level. 

There is a bill in the Legislature, HB5358, which will give the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection the permission to establish a limited black bear season in Litchfield County. 

I support this bill and urge others to do so as well. Let’s not wait for a tragedy to occur before we act.

John Morris

Goshen

Time for a change

When the leader is not capable

Downfall is inescapable

Decisions made are bad for all

You get guns or even a wall

Children dying all around

While money in politics does abound

We’ve never seen this worse

Are we living a Chinese curse?

Foreign strongman poisons and interferes

Our leader sheds no tears

He holds up in Mar-a-Lago

Like a movie desperado

Luckily we still can vote

Time to get rid of this old goat

Michael C. Kahler

Lakeville

Take a stand

The state of our country is of grave concern to me and to so many people. Watching the antics of President Trump is stomach-churning and frightening. I admit I am a proud Hillary supporter and was devastated when she lost the election. However, I was determined to keep an open mind about the current president, in spite of my misgivings and for the good of the country. That notion was done within a month!

President Trump runs the White House like it’s a circus and he is the carnival barker. The insulting tweets, treasonous behavior and complete lack of knowledge and decorum as the president of the United States is appalling. Our two parties, Democratic and Republican, are keeping their heads buried in the sand where Mr. Trump is concerned. This is our country, our home, our democracy, and it has become a joke. 

We have lost the respect, our impeccable standing and the good will of other countries. If President Trump is elected for a second term, our country will continue on the path it’s on now, with bigotry, racism, narcissistic and misogynistic behavior coming from the president of the United States. Mr. Trump and his cabinet are part of the “good old boys” network that has existed far too long and rears its ugly head far too often.

If we Americans were watching this happen in England or France, we would be horrified. So, why are we allowing it to happen in our own country?

There is an old adage that says, “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” It is time to stand, folks!

Gretchen M. Gordon

Sharon

Miner and Ohler: Please explain this inaction to voters

This is an open letter to state Rep. Brian Ohler (R-64) and state Sen. Craig Miner (R-30), and the Joint Committee on Public Safety.

The following reporting on a bill in the Connecticut state Legislature is from News 12 Connecticut TV’s website, www.connecticut.news12.com, posted on March 17:

The Public Safety Committee did not vote on legislation that would have banned “bump stocks,” however, the state Judiciary Committee will hear a similar bill next Friday. Bump stock devices attach to a semi-automatic weapon and allow them to fire more like a fully automatic weapon. They were used in the Las Vegas mass shooting in October 2017. Gov. Dannel Malloy had pushed hard for the bill. “That the Public Safety Committee would choose to not even take a vote on a bill banning bump stocks is disappointing, frustrating, and frankly perplexing,”  Malloy said in a statement.

Messrs. Ohler and Miner:

Allowing this bill to die in committee is outrageous. It defies public safety, common sense, and even the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s writing in the Washington D.C. v. Heller case of October, 2007, quoted from the full decision as below:

“2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of fire- arms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those ‘in common use at the time’ finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

See the full decision at www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf.

At the time of this decision, I remember Scalia being quoted as saying, “I’m not a nut.” Although his finding that an individual right was inferred in the “original” meaning of the Second Amendment, he would not have agreed to the premise that a modification to a semi-automatic rifle, which effectively makes it fully automatic, is protected by the Second Amendment. To argue otherwise is sheer nonsense. 

Let me explain myself. I am a veteran of the U.S. Navy, a former farm boy raised in a hunting family and a gun owner. I think I see the current gun rights/gun control debate with clarity and balance. Yet your committee’s decision baffles me. 

My challenge to you both: Explain in this forum to the people you represent exactly how your decision enhances public safety.

Peter Neely

Salisbury