Selfish adults leave kids at risk

Who’s surprised at the fact that a 13-year-old boy shows up in school with a .22 caliber handgun with three bullets in its magazine and another in the chamber (as reported Jan. 25)? Who can possibly be surprised that a 13-year-old occasionally disobeys and gets into mischief?

There is little question that if you sincerely want to prevent kids from getting guns, you remove the temptation – the guns. The only factor that keeps it from really being that simple is the adult attitude that persists in sticking their collective heads in the sand refusing to give up a right – a constitutional right, to be sure – for the safety of their youngsters.

As evidence of that attitude, Bob Aldridge of the National Rifle Association, in the Jan. 26 issue, advocates the next step of those who refuse to come to grips with availability of guns by urging the state to “eliminate the requirement for law-abiding residents to purchase and possess a license to carry.”

As long as adults insist on their rights at the expense of the threat to the lives of their kids, this story will occur again and again.

ERNEST G. BARR North Manchester

Lawmakers send state back in time

What timing! Indiana hosts the Super Bowl, attracting the attention of thousands of business owners across the country. The legislature passes a punitive law that will help Indiana businesses break labor unions. And then the state Senate tells the business world that Indiana schools are going to teach students that creationism and other mythologies are substitutes for evolutionary science. Business leaders who want to invest in states that produce well-educated workforces will be rolling their eyes and scratching stupid Indiana off their lists.

Trying to reason with the creator of this embarrassing legislation would be useless. Sen. Dennis Kruse has also been trying to let public schools tell children to recite the Lord’s Prayer every day. For the majority of the Senate to vote for this creationism thing, however, is just begging Jay Leno to tell Hoosier jokes. It must be hoped that the House has more sense and ignores the Senate’s bill.

If Kruse & Co. want religion taught in the schools, they should have the guts to mandate comparative religion classes and take the heat accordingly. “Creation science” is a smokescreen for theology. It is not science. If Indiana legislators don’t know the difference between science and religion, no amount of hyping the wonders of Indiana’s business climate will hide the funda- mental(ist) fraud in our schools. Between this farce and the right-to-work law, Indiana is evolving all right – evolving into another Mississippi.

EVAN DAVIS Fort Wayne

YLNI betrays its partisanship

Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana’s mission was to provide a forum for interested young professionals who simply want to make where they live better, regardless of their political affiliation. Or that’s what I assumed their mission was.

Apparently I was mistaken. The YLNI board’s decision to endorse the controversial and partisan right-to-work legislation makes no strategic sense in terms of their core competency. It eliminates their strategic advantage of non-partisanship. The simple beauty of an organization like YLNI is its ability to attract allegedly talented people from any political viewpoint. Choosing to endorse legislation that has nothing to do with the group’s reason for existence makes any serious outsider question the leadership’s judgment on any topic. More immediately, it alienates about half of their membership.

I don’t currently live in Fort Wayne, but I consider it my home. I may move back one day because I know it to be a good place to live. I would want to participate and I hope there are good nonpartisan community-centered groups when I come home. Based on its illogical decision-making pattern and choice to muck themselves in partisan waters, I don’t think you can count YLNI among such groups anymore.

PATRICK McALISTER Indianapolis

Repeal women’s right to vote

Dina Jennings’ letter (Feb. 1) makes the point that restoring laws from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s can help get the USA back to conservative values. She misses the mark by a decade.

In the 1910s American freedoms had sturdy grounding. But in 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, and that’s when the country went to H-E-double-toothpicks. Women got the vote and the rest is history, not personal opinion.

So it would be the repeal of a law, rather than cut and-paste restorations, to get America back on track.

PETE CHRISTENSEN Fort Wayne