In case u missed ICUMI
I have to respond to your ICUMI column in your issue of Feb 26. Anybody paying attention to the news since the presidential elections of 2008 know that immediately following the election, the number of guns and ammunition being bought and sold went through the roof. It has slowed down some since, but still records have been set for the number of firearms sold.
According to your article, this should have resulted in more shootings, because “too many people are getting murdered by guns.” The facts, however, say something else. You did not quote your sources in your story, but according to the FBI, 2013 saw the violent crime rate fall 5.1 percent from the previous year, and it is at it’s lowest rate since 1978. Digging a little more into the FBI info tells us that the murder and manslaughter rate dropped 4.4 percent, to it’s lowest rate since 1968. Violent crime overall has dropped 37.4 percent in the past two decades, which utterly contradicts your premise that more guns cause more crime.
Yes, we have a big problem with school shootings and other random mass murders, but the more important common thread in the Aurora theater shooting, Sandy Hook shooting, Columbine High school shooting, Virginia tech shooting and many more shootings that thankfully resulted in not so much loss of life, is SSRIs, aka antidepressants. Guns don’t make people crazy, the over prescribing and lack of follow up by the medical profession sending home psychotropic drugs with Eric Harris can, and does. If Michael Bloomberg thinks the National Rifle Association is a formidable opponent, let’s see him take on Big Pharma. It’s true that SSRIs can, and do, help a lot of people, but they need to be monitored much more closely. Some people on these drugs should not have access to firearms.
In the fantasy world of Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and the Brady bunch, they would love to see firearms owners prove competency, be licensed and have insurance. On the other hand, to drive a car in our society, you have to do all these things, and still, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 36,203 people died in 2011 in auto accidents.
If gun control worked, Chicago would look more like Disneyland, not Mogadishu.
Stephen Ruddock/Gold Lake
How low can we go?
Newly leaked classified documents from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) show that it will dramatically expand the power of corporations to use closed-door tribunals to challenge, and supersede, domestic laws which protect our health, environment and labor rights.
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said, “With the veil of secrecy ripped back, finally everyone can see for themselves that the TPP would give multinational corporations extraordinary new powers that undermine our sovereignty, expose U.S. taxpayers to billions in new liability, and privilege foreign firms operating here with special rights not available to U.S. firms under U.S. law.”
Much has already been written about how governments can be sued for loss of “expected future profit” because of existing laws protecting the citizenry. I won’t go into more details here.
But what I found really telling was that the cover of the leaked investment chapter says it must remain classified “four years from entry into force of the TPP agreement” (or if no agreement four years from the close of negotiations). So not only is this “deal” being negotiated in secret, but we will not even know all it contains for years after we are bound by it.
So much for the openness and transparency Rep. Polis keeps assuring us of. Surely we can trade with other nations without the TPP.
Nancy Sullo/Boulder
Thanks
Hey, great article [Re: “Attorney: Draft air quality regulations a mixed bag,” Nov. 27, 2013].
We citizens need more information. Can you please do a follow up focusing and clarifying what this rule is all about? Why isn’t more control of well emissions required? What’s the status of that? Is there a website? How can citizens comment on it, and push back on the wide-open rape of Weld County called “oil and gas development”? I think it’s important to let folks in on this.
Robert Dresdner/Vienna, Va.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
