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Kids & Guns

I just read Maria Tomchick's article "Gun Lobby Control" in Vol.3, No. 39, June 23.

Kids should definitely not have guns that kill. Kids should not have guns because they don't want guns, though--not because laws make it difficult. Laws erase accountability--there is no virtue without choice. Kids have to choose not to buy guns, on their own and with their parents' guidance. More stringent gun laws will change little. Better public schools, parents having more time to spend with their children, kids watching less TV and reading more literature, kids being out in nature where they can get in touch with the sanctity of life and the interconnectedness of all things...

Maria, I applaud your journalism. I applaud your critical eye. Thank you for taking the time to read my comments.

M. Schubert, via e-mail

M.T. replies: Actually, if we want kids to not pick up guns, we have to begin to treat them with some respect: give them something worthwhile to do, some responsibilities, the ability to make some decisions about their own lives, AND give them the right to escape from violent and abusive families to a safe haven (not the streets). Of course, that means our society would have to give up the nasty habit of treating children as either the legal property of their parents or as mindless, helpless wards of the state to be cheaply dumped into under-funded schools and institutions for hours, days, weeks, and years on end. Ever wonder how our society could spend some of those billions of dollars wasted by the Pentagon every year? Now you know.

Special Right

Re the gun controversy:

Here is the problem, and the glitch in the Constitution, that everybody is missing: unlike the other rights, the 2nd Amendment applies only to a minority.

When the original document was written, there was an attempt to add riders to the document that would have covered specialty interests--the most notorious being fishing rights. The framers wisely decided to make the document as generalized as possible. That would allow it to cover all cases in the future, regardless of technological or social invention or renovation.

But, like all human productions, the Constitution is not perfect, and has developed an anachronism, based on the 2nd Amendment.

The 2nd Amendment applied only to owners of guns. In doing so, it absolutely ignored many classes of people within the country.

In the course of time, groups that were not citizens by the original document--women, blacks, indentured servants, to name a few--have gained at least full LEGAL rights. Gun-owners, however, are not a majority, nor are they a natural group. They must buy their guns, as any of us may buy a horse, and now a car.

We have to realize that gun owners are a specialty group, like fishermen, or entrepreneurs, or architects, to name a few. Unlike these other technological or economic social groups, they are demanding specialized consideration that does not apply to the population overall. They want their rights to come first, over the rights of every other citizen in the country.

The Constitution is not infallible. It was written by human beings. The same sort of human beings that at one point made it illegal to drink alcohol--and inserted it into the basic doctrine of their government. This is too specialized a law for a basic doctrine, and was soon removed.

The Gun Lobby is a minority. They have the same rights as all other citizens. But they shouldn't demand that their one specialized right come before the rights of all the citizens of the majority.

Donna Barr, Bremerton, WA

The Poison Food Lobby

RE: Nature & Politics, "The Poison Lobby: Monsanto & Its Political Musclemen" [ETS!, 2/17/99].

Good article ... however, there are other people and things, too.

There is Dr. Margaret Miller, who hired on to the FDA from Monsanto ... to review her own work on rbGH [bovine growth hormone--eds.]. Her recommendation was to raise the allowable levels of antibiotics in milk from one part per 100 million to 1 part per million. They knew that the Posilac shots (bovine growth hormone) would cause excessive mastitis and other problems that would require increased amounts of powerful antibiotics. The New York Times and CU did independent tests in New York ... and discovered residue of up to 52 antibiotics ... and of course, nobody tests for most of them.

The report: Richard, Odaglia, and Deslex, 1989.

There is a key MONSANTO report that shows that rBST was responsible for causing cancer in laboratory animals. Mr. Robert Cohen had partial data from a study authored by Richard, Odaglia, and Deslex hinting at a horrible threat to all Americans. Mr. Cohen sued the FDA and Monsanto, but a federal judge would not review or release the entire study, despite the fact that the FDA should have. The FDA did not review the contents of this important study.

This key Monsanto study was reviewed by Canada. During the course of the review, safes were mysteriously broken into and files stolen. This key 90-day study was actually a 180-day study. Canada will not learn this until the stolen files are replaced. However, what happened to 300 laboratory animals during the first 90 days was so horrendous that a group of five courageous Canadian scientists jeopardized their jobs and careers by holding a press conference to reveal the truth (1999). So outraged were they about the cancers and actions of this genetically engineered drug, that they went public with their report.

President Clinton, who is lactose intolerant, signed a law that provides very harsh penalties for obtaining "trade secrets," under which the above documentation now falls. The world's public will never know the truth ... just suffer from the horrible consequences.

For (much) more info please consider contacting Mr. Robert Cohen, author of "Milk, the deadly poison," and visit his web site at http://www.notmilk.com.

My primary concern is aspartame ... not a diet aid and never proven safe. Dr. Friedman, who ignored the aspartame (and rbGH) issues for three years as acting FDA commissioner, just accepted a lucrative VP job with G.D. Searle.

Check out http://www.dorway.com. It has 500+ pages on this subject. I also have entered the genetic engineering arena (http://www.dorway.com/genews.html) to include Monsanto's "terminator seed technology."

Regards,

Dave Rietz, Mission Possible, SC

Angels of Death

I was out in front of the Red Apple Market on Beacon Ave. S. on a sunny Sunday afternoon watching young Vietnamese, Cambodian and Central American families flinch and cower as the Blue Angels flew low over our neighborhood. I could see the fear in their faces as they recalled the days and nights their homelands were bombed into smithereens and family members died around them while a country was torn apart.

I noticed that with each sweep the fighter planes use the Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill to loop over rather than disturb the wealthy white civilian populations to the East: Mercer Island, Bellevue, Medina. Each year people come to ooh and ah over the spectacle of death machines whooshing and roaring close to our houses, parks, picnics--frightening us--and anything that remains outdoors for 5 days straight: birds, cats, children.

For those of us who live in the SeaTac flight path, who live on the flight paths for Boeing or Renton field's flight path (for smaller planes, jet-props, and helicopters)--for those of us for whom this is a daily and nightly nightmare--the Blue Angels' noise is a cruel joke played out at our expense--an intensification of an already horrendous situation for the quick pleasure of visitors.

For my Asian-heritage and Latin American brothers and sisters it must bring up some of the most confusing and terrifying feelings I can possibly imagine. Also, since this weekend coincides with the anniversary of the bombs over Hiroshima, I can only weep while thinking of how deeply we are punishing those who had friends and relatives die in Japan during the second World War--not to mention those who returned to Beacon Hill from internment camps.

Let's be smart. Let's be kind. Let's stop and think for 2 seconds. Let's have a different celebration in 2000 and not invite the Blue Angels of death.

Sincerely,

Albert Kaufman, Seattle, WA