Good, bad gunmen increase body count
The NRA claims the only person who can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Actually, that is a way to increase the body count.
The Army trained me, especially in nine weeks of Ranger school, how to respond to an enemy assault, which served me well in Vietnam. I have been shot at, and I know how I respond.
Teachers, coaches, assistant principals and whoever else the NRA would like to arm would receive training how to handle and shoot weapons – at targets that don’t shoot back.
Without intense training or combat conditions, no one knows how they would respond when attacked. I fear the result would be two people, one bad, one good, spraying bullets in a classroom of children or a church of parishioners.
The first priority to stopping mass shootings is to get the NRA out of Congress by voting out those who pander to its money. Second is stopping the sale to civilians of military-grade weapons, large capacity magazines and accessories that create automatic weapons. Third is increasing school security with trained officers until the first two priorities are accomplished.
James M. Hemsley, U.S. Army, retired
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Soros evidently is just good investor
Monday’s right side editoirial page featured a small blurb on the “hypocrisy” of George Soros investing in a coal producer when he funds at the same time efforts to temper climate change.
So I had to look him up as I’ve done for other “demons of the left” like Howard Zinn and Saul Alinsky (those two being liberal icons of the Civil Rights era who the right would love to term “commies”).
Soros is a complicated creature, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust in WWII Hungary who became one of the world’s most successful investors (and the founder of one of the first and probably most successful hedge funds). He has donated billions of dollars, mostly to the causes of democracy in Eastern Europe. I believe the investor side of him sees a buying opportunity in Peabody Coal (who knows, their land may be worth more than their valuation?).
The right would honor him but for the fact that he also gives millions of dollars toward liberal U.S. politics (driving them mostly crazy).
Full disclosure: George Soros or his associates did not pay me for this note.
Byron Chapin, Hixson
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Litter keeps city from being scenic
It is past time to bring back the “Tennessee Trash” campaign. It is past time for state and local governments to place greater emphasis on monitoring and punishing littering.
It is also time to again educate the public on its responsibility and the laws relative to purposeful littering. It is obvious we have a lot of area litterbugs who disrespect our environment and the citizens of our area and state.
Pay attention to the view along the sides of our streets, roads and highways. The amount of trash purposely thrown out of car and truck windows, thrown or blown out of the beds of pickup trucks and the basic lack of respect for our local environment has increased exponentially over the previous few years.
It is past time to rigidly enforce our anti-littering laws and to substantially increase punishment and fines for littering violations.
The use of the phrase “Scenic City” or “Scenic Area” are a misrepresentation of the facts at present. Layers of garbage strewn along our area roads is not scenic.
As our grandparents might have said, people who purposely litter are “trash” and should be labeled as such.
Lenard Bush, Hixson