Letters to the Editor (Feb. 4)

Guns on campus

I think those in our Legislature are short sighted when they believe that, as the chairman of the Kansas State Rifle Association PAC said, young adults should be trusted to carry a firearm for self-defense.

When young people join the military, they are under 24/7 military supervision and authority. They are required to have extensive training of gun care and use. They are not allowed to take firearms off the base. Nor do they have free access to alcoholic beverages.

They are under close supervision of military training instructors, whose job it is to develop discipline in these young people whose brains have been scientifically shown not to be fully developed until age 25, especially in the area of risk assessment. Perhaps this is the same reason we have so many gang shootings and stabbings.

I believe that our public universities have the knowledge and should decide whether their faculty and students should be exposed to the danger guns on campus poses.

In place of this, perhaps all students should be required to join ROTC in their freshman year and pass gun care and training before being allowed to carry a gun on campus.

Swatters are accomplices to harm

House Bill 2581 has been introduced to address penalties for “swatting.” While I haven’t read the bill, the article in the Jan. 31 Eagle said the bill addresses what would constitute misdemeanor charges, what would constitute felony charges and what would constitute escalating penalties.

It appears to me that the fair thing to do is to pass a state statute defining that an act of swatting that results in an act by anyone, including first responders, to inadvertently cause damage, loss or harm, makes the “swatter” an accomplice to that damage. The “swatter” should be subject to the penalties already on the books for accomplices in the commission of those crimes.

Take the ambiguity out of the equation.

A tribute to Gaylord Dold

I first met Gaylord Dold while working at The Eagle as books editor. After decades of reviewing for the paper, he contacted me on a quest for “free books.” (The only reward for writing a review was a copy of the book itself.) I honored his request, and quickly had a bevy of erudite, aesthetically sensitive reviews in hand.

We became friends and shared many other loves as well – philosophy (although he had given up on the traditional kind, turning instead to cognitive science); poetry (with his tastes much narrower than my own); and travel, especially to the American Southwest. We met regularly for lunch in the same restaurant, at the same table, and he would regale me with adventure stories, his literary aspirations (still going strong at 70), and challenging theories about the human mind.

His death is a pathetic loss, emphasizing the root word of “pathos.” As his lifelong friend Jeff Worley commented in the Eagle obituary, Gaylord was remarkably healthy and an avid practitioner of yoga. It not only improved his body, but brightened his mind. That he could so quickly succumb to the flu beggars the imagination. I still cannot process it.

Immigration’s changing parameters

I quote the final lines of the famous poem by Emma Lazarus that is engraved on a tablet within the pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teaming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Contrast the lofty spirit and high values embedded in these words, with the tone and lack of generosity in the words of President Trump, who wants to build a wall and secure all borders to keep out the “undesirables,” and allow in only those who “meet education and work requirements” in a new “merit-based immigration system.” In other words, keep away those who are in need of help and let in only those who can help us; none from “s-hole countries,” only those from prosperous lands.

One wonders where this country would be now, if the history of immigration to America had been governed by Trump’s values. Would you be part of today’s population?

Youth and guns

Another day, another shooting. This time in California, and in some locations it is so common, it isn’t even worthy of mentioning anymore.

Our hard-working legislators, following the lead of the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre (“The only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun”) have come up with the solution. Let’s make it legal for 18-year-olds to carry concealed.

The bill has not passed both houses, but the mere fact it has been introduced suggests that it will happen sooner or later. Do we not have any common sense anymore? I would say let’s return to the good old days and forget about the rule of law, but even they had their limits back then.

The opioid epidemic

Our nation faces the worst drug addiction epidemic it has ever known. In addition to pot and illegal narcotics, millions are now addicted to prescription opioids. The epidemic knows no boundaries. It reaches all races, ages and economic levels of our society.

How frightening when some of our top-level professionals, including lawmakers, are addicted to drugs.

Is it any wonder that this problem exists when pharmaceutical companies and advertising agencies have been pushing drugs on television, radio and in print for over three decades? And it certainly doesn't help when so many physicians find it lucrative to hand out prescriptions like Halloween candy. The incentives for them to do so are considerable.

I for one am sick of seeing endless ads for prescription drugs. The need for drugs should not be driven by patient request, but by determination of a qualified physician only. We need a nationwide data base to track all prescription medication with particular attention paid to amounts dispensed to each individual. And we need much stronger laws to deal with the illegal distribution of prescriptions.

This epidemic is frightening. It's one can we can't afford to kick down the road.

This story was originally published February 4, 2018 at 4:00 AM with the headline "Letters to the Editor (Feb. 4)."