Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 13, 1993 TAG: 9310150386
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This ain't peanuts folks, and is much worse than even the rip-off prices health-insurance people charge now. The figures still don't add up on paying for this costly social manipulation, and probably never will.
The most confusing thing to my mind, however, is trying to figure out the difference between Clinton's health alliances and the former Soviet Union's collectives.
If one of your liberal editors could explain this in print, I'm certain it would help us poor befuddled conservatives.
FREEMAN W. JENRETTE
BEDFORD
Blowing away the kids' future
I WATCHED a television show recently that not only made me cry. It repulsed me as well. This documentary centered around the subject of firearms and young children. It was a graphic on-the-scene look at gun play among youngsters and children who should have been playing house or shooting marbles, not handguns.
As I watched as 5-year-old children were being rushed to an emergency room to have a bullet removed or to be pronounced dead on arrival, a simple thought ran through my 31-year-old head: Whatever happened to being a kid? Drive-by shootings, accidental or malicious woundings claim thousands of youthful lives every year. Most are under the age of 16.
One part of the story depicted a 17-year-old who was shot in the spinal column and will be paralyzed for the rest of his life, in a wheelchair. He was an athlete and happy, but not now. He can type his name with a pencil held in his mouth. The day before he could scale an obstacle like a cat on a curtain.
To watch children describe how they protect themselves on the streets and in their front yards gave me a feeling of unease for the future of this country.
I don't have the answer to this terrible problem. But as a nation of the most creative, hard-driving, intelligent people who exist, if we were to link our brains and hearts together, surely we could find an answer and maybe a less violent future for the children who are here now and those yet to be born.
Do you know where your gun is at this very moment?
AARON R. SWINDLE
MARTINSVILLE
Gun regulations are reasonable
IT'S REASONABLE to ask a pistol buyer to wait five days to possess a pistol so that a nationwide search for criminal records can take place. These regulations are not the complete answer to crime in Virginia, but they will help slow the criminals' arms race.
These regulations are no more a first step toward banning all guns than driver regulations are afirst step toward banning automobiles. Reasonable driver-license restrictions do keep some drunks off the road.
The National Rifle Association and George Allen are strongly against pistol regulations of any kind. The NRA would have us believe it's a basic human right to be armed with machine guns (assault rifles).
Mary Sue Terry's proposed pistol regulation in no way threatens the sport of hunting. Virginia sportsmen will continue to reap the benefits of one of the best game-and-conservation programs in the country. Ms. Terry supports hunting as a sport, sportsmen gunners, archers and fishermen. We need to elect her.
ROBERT GILMER
ABINGDON
Clinton build a better car?
I WAS READING the paper recently and came across an article describing Clinton's ``supercar.'' Now I realize that he isn't very popular in the public eye, especially with people who voted for him, but this plan deserves looking at.
Would it not be worth it to have a car that got 80 miles per gallon? I don't know about you, but I'd be in favor of that. May be somebody could petition the president to pull our troops out of Somalia and quit spending so much there. Instead, have him spend some money at home designing a new car, which would at least slow down the growing rate of oil spills caused by tankers sending oil to the United States. It would put us way ahead of Japan in car manufacturing, since all the companies Clinton was talking to were American. That's also something that is highly desirable - more jobs here rather than overseas. It would allow the United States to spend less on oil and gasoline and more on important things like health care.
Who knows? This supercar thing could be the very glue that holds this country together in the coming years.
JEREMY BALDWIN
ROANOKE
The responsibility is Selbe's
EVERYONE has paid for Frank Selbe's sins but Selbe. His inability to accept responsibility for the results of his greed has continued to punish people who believed in Selbe and considered him their friend at one time.
It's time for Selbe to get on with his life and accept responsibility for his actions.
JAMES R. JONES
VINTON
by CNB