Good for seniors

I loved reading the article on the Council on Aging’s move to reopen and remodel the Community Center. The council offers such a great wealth of information and can connect people to services they need. It’s such an important function of the community to have a centralized place where seniors can get help, socialize and enjoy a nutritious meal. This is an essential need and a responsibility of ours to provide. Not all seniors are wealthy and healthy, and many have lost their support networks. I am so very pleased to hear of this development.

Barbara Fischer

Bend

Stop funding abortions

Following a school shooting in Kentucky in January, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin challenged Americans to recognize such shootings as a cultural problem. He said, “We can’t celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher authority and then expect that things like this are not going to happen. Our culture is crumbling from within.” Or celebrate death by abortion. Go to www.stopthefunding.org to be certain your name is included to stop taxpayer funding for abortion in Oregon. Taxpayers fund approximately 10 abortions each day in Oregon, according to Oregon Life United. We can do better.

Barbara Tesdal

Lebanon

Showing contempt for voters

The Democrats who rule state government just ignored the will of Oregon voters. They at least partially nullified the voters’ overwhelming 2014 decision (Measure 88) to deny driver’s licenses or cards to persons who cannot prove legal presence in the United States. The voters granted no exceptions.

Under the Democrats’ House Bill 4111, an undocumented immigrant can get a driver’s license if certain conditions are met and if he or she provides certain documents to the DMV. The bill was passed under the radar and at virtually the last hour of the 2018 legislative session. Every Democrat in the Legislature supported it.

HB 4111 also prohibits the DMV from verifying the foregoing documents, and a bogus “emergency” clause was attached to prevent another voter revolt. Supporters claim the bill applies only to DACA recipients, but neither the term “DACA” nor its definition appears in the language and phony documents are a dime a dozen.

The Democrats behind HB 4111 clearly couldn’t care less about voter mandates. They’ve learned that voters will return them to office in perpetuity, no matter what they do. That’s the real travesty here.

Jerry Ritter

Springfield

Harden schools to protect kids

Here we go again. A disturbed person enters a school, kills and injures several people with a gun, and the public is outraged. The anti-gun people propose “reasonable gun control measures” to restrict or eliminate gun possession. Children walk out of schools to protest gun ownership. We can agree on the importance of school safety but not on how to achieve it.

Site hardening is a solution that works. Visit your Social Security office and you will encounter two surly, armed uniformed security guards who will, after examining your need to be there, question you about weapons and go through your bags. The courthouse, police and sheriff’s offices and the airport all have enhanced site hardening and security to provide safety for those who work there.

Shouldn’t we do more to provide extra security for the children in our schools?

Some have proposed site hardening our schools with metal detectors, bulletproof glass, armed security guards and strict access procedures. Others have complained that this would be harsh and make schools more like prisons. They say schools should be places of learning, not fortresses.

We put locks, alarms and even cameras on our homes and businesses to keep bad people out. We know that security measures can work, so why not try? Unless you value attacking gun rights more than school safety. Remember, we banned certain rifles, small pistols and high capacity magazines for 10 years, and it didn’t solve the problem.

Ronald Webber

Bend