Letters to the Editor (Oct. 6): NRA, trashy town, Linwood Park, gun romance, state constitution

Another massacre without change

So NRA, how’s that “good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun” theory going for you with this latest mass shooting? In Nevada, anyone can own a gun so I assume some “good guy” at the concert had one, but he or she was too busy running to kill a guy on the 32nd floor of a hotel. He didn’t have a club, didn’t have a knife, weapons he’d have to get close and where his victims would have had a chance. No, he had the most cowardly weapon devised.

No hunter needs an automatic weapon, no private citizen needs one to protect their home, and neither needs to be able to buy to all the guns or ammunition they want. Yet this country says yes to all of that. So sadly, once again, all we’ll do is bury the dead and move on as the world looks on in horror and wonders what’s the matter with us that we can’t get some practical gun control in place. But hey, if we did nothing after 20 first-graders and their teachers were mowed down, why would we give a fig about some concert-goers in Sin City?

Keep Wichita cleaner

After my husband and I retired this last spring, we started to take more walks in and around our east-side neighborhood. It became very clear and not so enjoyable when we walked and saw so much trash along the way, we decided we needed to bring disposable grocery trash bags with us each time.

We have been shocked and are so amazed just how sloven people are to just open their window and possibly even their car doors and toss anything and everything out. When we walk, it is not unusual for us to bring home two full bags of trash plus some larger pieces that won't fit into the bags and put in our own trash bin.

We would like to have our city/county leaders consider the procedure of Lawrence and Douglas County, where trash service is required for each address and charged and paid within the water bills. If you have water at the home, you also have trash service. If such large trash bags are found along the streets, any personal information in that bag can be used to fine that person.

Take pride and use your own trash receptacle or one near your walking path.

Park didn’t need improvements

I have lived in the Linwood Park area most of my life. Imagine my surprise when work for an irrigation system around the recreation center was started.

Not one of the neighbors or patrons of the center to whom I have spoken see this as anything but an enormous waste of tax dollars and natural resources. Now that North Linwood Park has been barricaded to prevent driving in the park (the access drive to the shelter has been removed), a public school wrongly built on park grounds, and the unnecessary addition of a watering system around the rec center, we can see our tax dollars at work in Wichita.

The beauty and charm of this lovely old park is being eroded daily.

A different time with guns

In the 1950s, my dad had a rifle and a shotgun on a rack in our utility room. Some of our rural neighbors even had gun racks in their pickup trucks. No big deal.

The guns were used for hunting game. They did not attend ubiquitous gun shows and drool over shiny assault weapons. There was no gun culture. Shouldn’t the weird “guns are sexy” attitude today of too many Americans be seriously analyzed? Why the romancing of powerful guns? Now there are so many gun shows shows for the general public. Why?

Try amending the constitution

The Kansas constitution reads, “The legislature shall make suitable provision for the finance of the educational interests of the state.” From what I read, it appears that this section was modified during a special session in 1966. Which means that the voters of Kansas had to approve this change, just like they have done to preserve the right to bear arms (already covered in the U.S. Constitution) and the “right” to hunt and fish (really, that needs to be enshrined in the Constitution?).

Rather than continue this battle with the Kansas Supreme Court, why can’t the legislature amend the constitution to remove the word “suitable?” This would need to be approved by the voters, of course, but then the legislature would have a mandate to underfund schools as they desired and end the debate about “suitable” funding with the Kansas Supreme Court?

I’m not sure if I agree with letting the legislature underfund the schools, but instead of impeaching or recalling the Kansas Supreme Court because of the legislature’s inability to fund schools per the Kansas constitution, this would appear to be a “suitable” way out of the whole funding mess.

This story was originally published October 6, 2017 at 5:44 AM with the headline "Letters to the Editor (Oct. 6): NRA, trashy town, Linwood Park, gun romance, state constitution."