No headline

Should a prescription be required for ammunition?

Gun control will remain controversial and enforcement will remain problematic. Preventing school shootings is complicated and will require a wide mix of approaches.

However, legal drugs, like ammunition, are useful and they, too, are misused and a national problem. Required prescriptions for dangerous drugs hasve not been particularly controversial. Enforcement is far from perfect, but it has not raised constitutional challenges. Black market and theft are rampant.

My wife has a suggestion.

What if the same form of prescriptions was applied to ammunition? Purchase of ammunition under all circumstances could require a background check and a prescription from a law-enforcement agency. A prescription law will need to be combined with improved background checks. The background check would be in the hands of professional law enforcement, not, illogically, a burden on retailers.

There would be a black market and theft just as there there is with prescription drugs, but that hasn’t led us to eliminate prescriptions for drugs.

Would a study of the feasibility of such program be worthwhile? —Robert O’Neil, Kalispell

Maybe schools should teach ‘Thou shalt not kill’ again

I watched in horror as the details on the school shooting in Parkland emerged. People want answers. What turns a child into a killer?

Enemies of the faith tore the Ten Commandments off the school walls, removed prayer and censored Bible reading. After all, they were dangerous — they taught radical things like “Love thy neighbor,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “Thou shalt not kill.” Our Declaration of Independence says that we have a “right to life” but that right is under siege. It is said those who wrote the Declaration were evil, so we can ignore the rights it espouses.

We allowed the courts to force the abortion ruling “Roe v. Wade” on us. Years later we found out it was a hoax: Jane Roe, “Norma McCorvey,” never had an abortion but was used by the pro-abortion movement to strike down a law against abortion and establish a “right to privacy.”

You may be wondering how abortion laws tie into a school shooting. Over 3,000 babies are killed every day by abortion. When killing children becomes an accepted practice among adults it changes the psyche of our nation. The taking of human life is unthinkable when we follow biblical principles. A healthy society does not kill its own children.

While the Bible is out and the Constitution on its way out, we have lost our moorings. Children are fed hate, anger, violence and gore in our movies and video games. These things cheapen human life. Maybe “Thou shalt not kill” is not such a dangerous thing to teach our children. —Marsha Graham, Kalispell

NRA members, please help keep our kids safe in school

This is a plea to NRA members: to those of you I work with, go to church with, say hello to in the grocery store, see around town.

This is a plea. The recent shooting in Florida has our country once again arguing about gun control and highlighting the control the NRA has over members of Congress. Yet the NRA is you, its members. You are the ones who have the power of the vote and you are millions strong. Please, from the grass-roots of this organization, begin dialogue about reasonable gun laws that will keep the kids of this country safe.

I am a firm believer in our Constitution. I am a strong advocate for hunting of animals; I am passionately against the hunting of our children.

Please, the NRA is a powerful lobbying organization, but you are the roots of this organization and if you begin to request from your organization the support of taking responsible action on the types of guns available for purchase and setting in place requirements needed to purchase those guns, it would go a long way toward making our schools and our kids safer. —Anne Castren, Kalispell