Gun control
Gun control
Consider sanity issue
There have been two letters to the paper lately stating passionately that sane individuals do not kill people. Certainly law-abiding citizens do not murder people.
Let’s begin with the premise that you must be insane to kill anyone, unless your life or that of a loved one is threatened.This, unfortunately, is not the case.
Far more mass murders have been committed in the past decade by people in complete control of their mental faculties. Calculating and horrific — I will cite a few examples.
2007 — Carnation, Wash., Michele Anderson and her boyfriend killed six members of her family in a dispute over money.
2008 — Wesley Neal Higdon killed six in a workplace dispute.
2008 — Iowa City, Steven Sueppel, a banker, slaughtered his family to spare them the stress of his embezzlement trial.
2009 — Michael Mclendon killed 11 family members in a dispute over a family Bible.
I could go on, but you get the idea. More mass murders are committed by people like this than by the Seung-Hui Chos, Jared Lee Loughners, and Adam Lanzas of the nation.
The shooter in the Aurora, Colo., killings was a Phi Beta Kappa.
Any look at the statistics will show that most mass murders are over money, crimes of passion, family or marital disputes, workplace problems, etc.
Gangbangers may be criminals, but are they all insane? I don’t think so. If all murderers were insane, there wouldn’t be any on death row. They would all be in mental hospitals, found innocent by reason of mental defect. What is the common denominator?
Gregory Miller
Kailua-Kona
Tropical fish
Inspection bill good
It was with great delight that this fish inspection bill passed committee and might soon be enforced.
It’s good to know there will be authorized inspectors who can finally regulate what the aquarium collectors are taking from our reefs.
It should also put a damper on those who are not authorized to collect fish from poaching. I know that despite the fact any kind of reef poaching is against my belief, I realize that some do this for a living, so we must compromise.
That being said, I had doubts there were any real regulations and actual inspectors in place.
Now, hopefully, this will lessen the thief of our reefs.
Colleen Wallis
Kailua-Kona