People kill people

I feel strongly that this conversation about guns is going in the wrong direction and I will tell you why. If you put 50 people in a room with a gun, that gun will not kill anyone unless a person picks it up and does. If you put 50 people in a room with a dagger or sword, that item will not kill anyone unless a person picks it up and does. If you put 50 people in a room with a bucket of water, that water will not drown anyone unless a person takes a person’s head and holds it in that bucket.

It’s people, not the item, that is doing the killing. Get it? The FBI says five times more people were killed last year by knives than guns.

Bob Roth

Redmond

Vote Sam Carpenter

Nobel Prize-winning composer Bob Dylan wrote, “You can’t win with a losing hand,” released on his “Things Have Changed” album. We know that you can win with a losing poker hand by bluffing. This is precisely what the progressives in Salem have been doing for decades: increasing taxes and fees maintaining that the funds are needed for our children’s education, to improve state health care or to expand services for senior citizens.

Well, things have changed. We’re not buying it anymore. We need new vision and leadership in Salem, starting with electing Bend resident Sam Carpenter to replace PERS sweetheart Kate Brown, whose answer to Oregon’s problems is to take more of our hard-earned money.

Sam was born in rural upstate New York. He worked various blue-collar jobs, earned a technical degree in forestry and started his own business, Centratel, a telephone answering service in 1984 that now employees 48 people. As CEO, Sam learned from the ground up how to run a successful business, meet payrolls and provide great service to customers with maximum efficiency.

His priorities as governor will be to fix our dysfunctional state government, reduce stifling regulations to stimulate the economy and improve forest management with input from locals rather than bureaucrats whose main goal is to consolidate their power over our daily lives.

Now is the time, folks. Cash in your chips, trade in a losing hand and support Sam Carpenter for governor of Oregon in the primary.

Lee Fehlberg

Bend

Racial bias

Yes, it’s true. Racial bias is still being perpetuated by the media, even here in Central Oregon. In a front-page article by The Bulletin reporter Garrett Andrews on Feb. 24 announcing the appointment of Deputy District Attorney Raymond Crutchley as a circuit court judge, reporter Andrews described Mr. Crutchley as “the first black person to be appointed as a circuit court judge in Oregon east of the Cascade Mountains.”

What difference does it make that he is a black person? What counts is his education, training, knowledge and experience. Obviously he is well qualified for the position. Congratulations, Judge Crutchley. Shame on you, Garrett Andrews.

Dennis Harrison

Redmond

Ban assault rifles

Being a gun owner since I was 10 years old, and ex-Army, I have a definite understanding of firearms. Guns are designed to kill regardless of type, caliber or rate of fire. However, this current debate about gun availability in America has been erroneously framed by the NRA and its minions as a “constitutional right.”

First of all, the Second Amendment doesn’t give Americans license to possess any particular kind of weapon.

When the Second Amendment was adopted, the gun of choice was a muzzle-loaded musket. Any Indian could shoot six arrows at a soldier while the musket was fired and reloaded once.

I love the U.S. Constitution as much as any American and took the oath to protect it when I joined the Army. There is no law on the books, Constitution or otherwise, to prevent the banning of any weapon that is found detrimental to Americans at large. The unalienable right to life was the first right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence for good reason.

The lives of our citizens must be protected whether they are in church, music concerts, work, schools or wherever. When the Thompson submachine guns caused deaths in the 1920s, it was banned. When the sawed-off shotgun was used for killing people, it was banned. When the Uzi submachine gun came on the stage, it got banned. Today’s gun of choice for mass killers is the military assault rifle, and needs to be banned.

Larry Yeargan

Bend