Editor:
New York City covers about 300 square miles and has 33,000 police officers.
Douglas County, Ore., covers 2,000 square miles and has one sheriff to police (with the help of limited State Police) all of the county outside of larger towns.
In Oregon small towns usually contract with the local sheriff for police protection. Yet these large cities and populous states think that their sauce is good enough for our ganders.
One size has never fitted all!
The governor of New York says that no one needs an assault weapon or large capacity magazines. Tell that to the rancher in Arizona on the coyote trail where armed foreigners (who regularly murder both here and in their home countries) routinely transit their ranches with drugs and illegal immigrants.
Tell that to the woman and her kids who recently shot an intruder who chased them into the crawl space of their home. Good-on-her!!!
I lived for a few months in NYC and, regardless of the time of day or night, I never went out when I didn’t see a police presence. Yet I have driven from Sweet Home to Portland and back and never seen one.
Since I live in an unincorporated area, do I think it is necessary to have protection close by? You bet I do. I am not a gun nut but, as I told the dealer when he asked me if I wanted to try it out, “No, I’ve been trained and if I ever use it you’ll read about it in the papers!”
In the U.S., with over 300 million weapons, crime rates are declining. In Australia and England, where all weapons have been confiscated, they are rising. To me that says it all. Charlton Heston said it best: “From my cold dead hands!”
And guns are not the answer for our schools. What needs to be done is to install secure doors on all rooms, which can be controlled from a secure remote location and from inside the room along with an elaborate system of electronic surveillance.
During breaks the doors would be unlocked from the central location and the school carefully monitored with the electronic system. Windows on the first level would have one-way glass or a film like is used in cars and an ‘escape hatch’ to the outside. Upper levels would have trapdoors and ladders to lower levels and the hatches.
All that could be done for less that the annual cost of a police officer. And no guns in school.
William C. Curtis
Sweet Home