Letters to the editor Jan. 9

Second Amendment

Don’t let the anti-Second Amendment crowd distract you from the actual problem we face with violence here in the USA.

We don’t just have a “gun violence” problem here in the United States of America we have a people violence problem. Whenever people are using guns, knives, baseball bats, hammers, sticks, stones, vehicles, explosives, or poison to kill each other, it is never the fault of the method, or inanimate object used. It is always due to the common denominator; criminal minded humans.

Humans are very ingenious when it comes to harming their fellow humans. Humans are also very ingenious at skirting the law when they are so inclined. It is extremely foolish to try and control human behavior by controlling the inanimate objects used to commit crimes. Humans have been harming each other since we first appeared on Earth and will continue to do so long after guns, etc. have been replaced with more potent weapons. At this point all “object” control laws will be obsolete, but behavior control laws will not.

A criminal mind set is a character flaw and that is what needs to be controlled. The motive for any criminal act is a perceived reward. Remove that reward and replace it with an unwanted consequence and the criminal will be discourage from doing it.

The severity of the unwanted consequence is not what stops criminal acts. It is the surety of that consequence that does it.

Let’s put our thinking caps on and make sure each criminal act results in an appropriate unwanted consequence for the criminal and only the criminal.

Catch-and-release is not working and repeatedly writing ineffective laws against inanimate objects while expecting a different result is insane.

— Gerald W Hurst, Marion

The Wild West

The Dec. 8 edition of the Inter Lake included a story entitled “No Permit, No Problem,” about Montana joining the growing number of states allowing “constitutional carry” of guns. Some proponents of the permitless carry bill argue that people needing protection quickly do not have time to take an eight-hour class or wait through the permitting process. I believe that by eliminating the requirement for gun owners to take classes and undergo background checks to carry a firearm, the likelihood increases that unhinged people with easy access to concealed firearms will put law enforcement and citizens at greater risk of harm.

For example, a Helena court recently sentenced a Montana man charged with felony assault with a weapon and two concealed weapons charges. Police alleged that he got into an altercation with employees at a Helena restaurant when he was asked to wear a mask. He reportedly threatened the restaurant manager and employees, at one point patting his handgun and saying, “I’m going to get you.”

Montana’s attorney general Austin Knudsen told the Lewis and Clark County prosecutor to dismiss the concealed carry charges. Although the district judge strongly disagreed with Knudsen’s decision, he reduced the sentence to disorderly conduct, a $100 misdemeanor charge.

As another example, a year-old Inter Lake article entitled “Flathead Man with Long Criminal Record Gets Prison Time,” a local man stole an unlocked truck containing a handgun. During three reported confrontations, he used the handgun to intimidate and threaten individuals. He was eventually spotted by Montana Highway Patrol and a high-speed chase ensued, some of it the wrong way down U.S. 93. HIs criminal record dates back 20 years. He is precisely the wrong person you want having easy access to firearms.

I believe that those who threaten violence when asked by restaurant staff to follow public safety rules — or flee at high speeds armed with stolen guns — pose a danger to all of us. Making guns accessible to all without background checks invites lawlessness and chaos. There is an old adage: when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. We have arrived at a place, the Wild West, where all of us have guns including the outlaws.

— Joseph Biby, Kalispell

Are we frogs?

Just like the frog in slow boiling water who didn’t notice the danger, we seem to be in a similar situation where things are consistently changing at every moment. But because the change is small, most of us fail to notice it.

The Epoch Times newspaper put out a series of articles on “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World.

The series explains: “The specter of communism has been working for centuries to corrupt and destroy humanity. It began by crippling man spiritually, divorcing him from his divine origins. From here, the specter has led the peoples of the world to cast out their millennia-old cultural traditions that the divine had meticulously arranged as the proper standards for human existence.”

The series explains how the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated our family values, schools, universities, government, media, real estate — every aspect of American life, bringing the U.S. into a chaotic state, and how it is causing the destruction of our beliefs. This series helps us to understand how we are being slowly manipulated into accepting communism. Also, this global pandemic could have been avoided if the CCP hadn’t been deceitful and lied.

— Katherine Combes, Kalispell