Letters to the editor: Guns, grazing, vaccines
Vaccines
The last thing we need in Idaho are people from California and elsewhere bringing their selfish anti-vax notions and exposing our children to their children’s potential outbreaks of preventable childhood diseases. These idiotic, unfounded and unsubstantiated ideas are completely inconsistent with scientifically effective protection that has been proven for decades. What they are doing is not only unfair to their own children but unfair to the lives of the children who have been properly inoculated. Excuse me, but heralding their arrival is not good news.
Cora Yanacek, Boise
Grazing
Gateway roads to public lands are marked with signs telling visitors that “noxious weeds threaten your public lands ... weed-free hay required on public lands.” Hay on public lands? What about native wildflowers?
Much of our public lands — save for Idaho mountaintops — is not set aside for the conservation of biodiversity as much as it is for one specific thing: grazing by cattle.
Noxious weeds — invasive species like cheatgrass, Russian thistle, garlic mustard, Russian olive — invade wherever a disturbance has occurred. And, will wonders never cease, the critter doing said disturbance is the cow.
One doesn’t need to be a range scientist or botanist or to see what livestock are doing to our public lands. Every time I head into Owyhee County to hike around public land managed by the BLM, I see and photograph the damage. Last year that included a dying clump of sulphur buckwheat, a beautiful native wildflower that had been buried under a cowpie. In the desert southeast of Grand View, I found a cactus killed when a bovine “engineer” stomped it into smithereens.
The correct thing to do is simple: Get the livestock off our public lands.
Alan C. Gregory, Mountain Home
Guns
“Would you take a bullet for us Ms. Herman?” a question whispered to me during a lockdown drill one of my first days teaching.
I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember, but when I was young, I never imagined sacrificing myself would be something I had to think about in my day-to-day life. It shouldn’t be something anyone should have to worry about on their way to work, school, the mall, their place of faith, or anywhere.
An easy way to help prevent these tragedies would be to pass common sense gun laws, including better background checks for firearm sales.
A 2019 analysis found that states with laws requiring background checks for all gun sales are associated with 10 percent lower homicide rates. A study from the Journal of Urban Health says, state laws requiring background checks for all handgun sales are associated with 48 percent lower rates of gun trafficking in cities. Make no mistake, I will defend your children every day, but will you help me by supporting gun safety and candidates that make gun violence prevention a priority this election cycle?
Athena Herman, Boise
Gun laws
I’m writing because I believe in common sense gun laws and their ability to make Idaho safer. According to the CDC’s Fatal Injury Reports, Idaho has the 16th highest rate of gun death in the U.S., 87% of which are suicides, meaning it has the 4th highest gun suicide rate in the country. Most of these deaths would have been preventable with common sense gun laws or proper storage of guns. (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline available 24/7: 1-800-273-8255.)
Death by gun suicide is the leading cause of gun violence in Idaho, but it’s not the only gun safety issue. Two proposed bills in the Idaho Legislature would take power away from local government, instead creating statewide laws. One would allow concealed carry within city limits, regardless of state residency. The other would allow weapons on public school campuses. Both of these would take away local power from the people that know their communities’ needs the best.
There are doable solutions for both of these. First is voting for candidates who support common sense gun laws. Second is contacting your state representatives to say you don’t support bills that take away local government’s gun safety laws.
Lauren Axness, Boise
Latino education
Maybe the Latino achievement gap (Idaho Statesman, 2/10) wouldn’t be so great if ELL students (English Language Learners) weren’t disproportionately consigned to digital teaching devices instead of bilingual, certified teachers, as before. An MIT study reported in The Week magazine found that “vulnerable students” are especially disadvantaged by laptop-centered learning methods, especially in the lower grades. This confirms the everyday experience of primary-grade teachers. Public school administrators need to channel their limited funds more to qualified teachers, less to technology.
James Runsvold, Caldwell