More gun control

NRA members and gun owners: I’ve read that the majority of you agree that stronger gun regulations are necessary. Please write your leadership and tell them to support legislation to keep guns and people safe — especially children. The current NRA leadership is about having assault weapons and no regulations. The main reason being so they can be an armed militia to protect us against our democratically-elected government. In the meantime, children, teenagers and others are being mass-murdered by guns — specifically semi-automatic weapons. Guns are also used daily for homicides, suicides and accidental deaths. The NRA is not keeping people safe with its present tactics. Many studies have shown that having more guns contributes to more deaths. Please challenge their reasoning against regulations. Let them know that research shows the association between mental illness and violence is very low. One study I found said it was 4 percent, the highest said 22 percent. Research has also shown that the United States has become “the most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into” according to a study in Health Affairs. NRA members, please call out your leadership for not supporting stronger controls on the murder of innocents. Strong background checks and banning bump stocks and semi-automatic weapons are common sense, and being able to buy a gun at 21 years old and over is common sense. These kind of laws are to keep people from hurting themselves and others. NRA members, please tell your leadership that “enough is enough.”

Maureen Sweeney

Bend

Walden doesn’t care enough

I read Lucinda Baker’s recent letter praising Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, for supporting the Prevent All Soring Tactics Act with astonishment. Perhaps it would have been beneficial for her to have reviewed his historical record in supporting animal protection legislation to understand how anti-animal our congressman is. In 2017, the Humane Society Legislative Fund, an organization that rates all senators and representatives each year based on their support of animal welfare legislation, gave Walden a zero rating out of 100. Overall, the congressman has made it quite obvious that helping those that can’t defend themselves is unimportant to him. If you are interested in the specific bills he did not support or took an opposing viewpoint on, go to hslf.org and click on Humane Scorecard. In contrast, all elected officials from Oregon received a 100 percent rating last year, with the exception of Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, who received a 91percent. These are the elected officials who care about animal cruelty. Animals are not even on Walden’s radar.

Christine White

Bend

Bulletin left out Obama

The Bulletin article that probed Dennis Richardson’s consultation with “controversial” Cambridge Analytica during his campaign never mentioned it when Obama used the same firm for his 2012 re-election. The only difference was that in 2012 Cambridge Analytica used Facebook members as its operatives. It asked members to let it use their friends’ data without them knowing it. Facebook then gave the original data providers instructions on how to persuade their friends to vote for Obama.

By 2012 Facebook had changed its rules to let Cambridge Analytica mine data, create psychological profiles and microtarget Facebook members directly without co-opting Facebook friends as de facto campaigners. This ethical hair splitting to imply that Richardson was underhanded to use Cambridge Analytica as a campaign consultant is an example of journalistic double standards.

Lyneil Vandermolen

Powell Butte

Knopp helped make good change

The League of Oregon Cities would like to publicly thank Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, for his efforts to help pass legislation that will assist cities in meeting their PERS requirements. Senate Bill 1566 builds the framework of a matching system that will assist local government employers by adding 25 cents for every dollar they contribute into accounts that allow them to “prepay” their PERS contributions. There is still more work to do, but we now have the legal structure that will allow the state to assist cities in meeting this state mandate.

Mike Culley, executive director of the League of Oregon Cities

Salem