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As both a gun owner and an advocate for gun control, I feel responsible to add my thoughts in the aftershock of another school massacre. I know, enough has been written on the subject to sink a ship, but those of us advocating for gun control must keep writing and advocating until this sinking ship is righted. The ship going down is the United States. Today we are divided on many fronts, but none, it seems, more divisive than gun control. And as has been written, uttered and memorialized since the time of Jesus, “A house divided cannot stand.” Clearly, the United Stated is on that desperate tipping point.

In response to the Parkland shooting, this newspaper wrote an editorial that went overboard in suggesting that gun-control advocates want to ban guns. How NRA is that! This make-believe, blanket claim effectively fires up the NRA troops, but is absurdly false and is very much worn thin. In fact, gun control is an appeal for simple common sense.

Consider the Second Amendment, the holy grail of the gun lobby. Their greatest fear is that everyone’s right to own any and all sorts of weaponry might be infringed. Would not the writers of the Second Amendment of 200 plus years ago bleed to see the relentless havoc of today’s “un-regulated” militia, this free-for-a|l of weaponry? Could they even conceive of their single shot musket becoming our AR-15 killing machine? And never mind the beautiful right of those gunned down. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is gone for the children, and parents, of Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland.

Common sense — assault rifles are for killing people. They have no place anywhere in our culture except for the military. That in itself is sad enough. Wayne LaPierre and his NRA army see themselves as conciliatory martyrs when they suffer the most negligible, and irrelevant, gun control. Perhaps, they concede, one should be 21 to purchase an assault rifle, not 18. As if an assault rifle is comparable to a pack of cigarettes or bottle of beer. In a way it is; get your 21-year-old buddy to buy your assault rifle and ammo. Or maybe they’ll consider giving up their bump stocks so that killers can nail only one casualty at a shot instead of 75 in rapid fire. Is this supposed to be pacifying? What a charade.

When Wayne La Pierre has the temerity to accuse the parents and children affected at Parkland of “exploiting” the massacre as they rightfully implore our president and Congress for real, effective and common-sense gun laws, that’s when I know Mr. LaPierre and the NRA are dinosaurs. Let’s hope they go extinct before our nation. —Leo Keane, Whitefish

Will Trump win the immigration debate?

The immigration issue, which remains unsolved, is just going to get uglier. The reason? Sen. Schumer doesn’t want a total immigration bill passed. And why? Because of politics.

President Trump has Schumer in a box. Trump has delivered the conservatives to this issue with his offer of 1.8 million Dreamers eligible for some form of citizenship. That’s a lot further than what conservatives feel they could accept, but Trump, being a forceful leader, will bring them along. But Schumer is just a politician, not a leader like Trump, so he can’t move his base at all. He knows, like most informed people, that no reform can happen without the wall and an end to chain migration and the lottery system.

But Schumer has problems never discussed. First of all he just can’t let Trump have another success even if it is good for our country. He just can’t allow that. Secondly, he knows the liberals have no other issues to run on — the tax bill is passed, the economy’s great, Trump is leading on foreign policy and the Affordable Care Act is in shambles. There is nothing left. Liberals believe their only option is to continue fanning the flames of racism and division, which means no compromise that would lead to the passage of this bill.

The results are foreseeable. Trump, knowing his duty to uphold the law, sooner or later will have to start deportation. The left will respond as usual: with marches, demonstrations and violence in the form of burning, looting and destruction in an effort to bludgeon America citizens to accept their desires for no borders and unlimited illegal immigrants flooding into our country.

Quite possibly this violence will lead to bloodshed, which would be a high price to pay just for politics, particularly since a compromise to solve this problem is available now. If it isn’t accomplished, the fault is clearly Schumer’s as well as our own Sen. Tester, and any bloodshed is certainly on their hands. —Mark Agather, Kalispell

Local VA care is good, but system is not

In regards to the front-page article last week about the veteran, I am happy he got his needs taken care of, but my experience has been somewhat different in dealing with the VA health system.

In over 20 years of going to the local clinic (and that’s from just after it opened in Columbia Falls) I have never had to wait more than 15 minutes past the time it was scheduled. On top of that all the nurses have been great and the two main doctors I have seen through the years could not have better — from diagnosing my cancer to blood clots in my lungs and literally saved my life more than once.

All was not great otherwise though. I have many times had appointments canceled because of doctors leaving the VA system and have been given wrong information a couple of times. It’s a shame we have to travel to Fort Harrison some 200 miles away for some care, but out of all the hospitals, and there have been many I have been in, there were none in which I got better care.

Back in the day (as they say) the care was better because those we send to Washington got involved with the Veterans Choice program. I personally have been threatened with collection because the program did not pay the bill as they were supposed to. I totally disagree with the opinion in the article that the program was well thought out. No, what they did was give Choice a ton of money to sit on and then pay out as they saw fit, and with all the lawyers in Washington, they were not smart enough to have a clause where they could cancel or have a non-performance clause written into it.

It bothers me that the veteran in the article was able to get his care locally when we all don’t get the same option, but good for him. In the article it states he was taken care of here in Kalispell by a private provider and I would like to know just who that was as almost all now work for the hospital. I think the whole system is like everything the government is in charge of, and unless we demand change by kicking the freeloaders out of office who oversee these programs, we will just have to take what they hand out. —Glen Hook, Kalispell

Common sense needed on gun regulation

As both a gun owner and an advocate for gun control, I feel responsible to add my thoughts in the aftershock of another school massacre. I know, enough has been written on the subject to sink a ship, but those of us advocating for gun control must keep writing and advocating until this sinking ship is righted. The ship going down is the United States. Today we are divided on many fronts, but none, it seems, more divisive than gun control. And as has been written, uttered and memorialized since the time of Jesus, “A house divided cannot stand.” Clearly, the United Stated is on that desperate tipping point.

In response to the Parkland shooting, this newspaper wrote an editorial that went overboard in suggesting that gun-control advocates want to ban guns. How NRA is that! This make-believe, blanket claim effectively fires up the NRA troops, but is absurdly false and is very much worn thin. In fact, gun control is an appeal for simple common sense.

Consider the Second Amendment, the holy grail of the gun lobby. Their greatest fear is that everyone’s right to own any and all sorts of weaponry might be infringed. Would not the writers of the Second Amendment of 200 plus years ago bleed to see the relentless havoc of today’s “un-regulated” militia, this free-for-a|l of weaponry? Could they even conceive of their single shot musket becoming our AR-15 killing machine? And never mind the beautiful right of those gunned down. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is gone for the children, and parents, of Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland.

Common sense — assault rifles are for killing people. They have no place anywhere in our culture except for the military. That in itself is sad enough. Wayne LaPierre and his NRA army see themselves as conciliatory martyrs when they suffer the most negligible, and irrelevant, gun control. Perhaps, they concede, one should be 21 to purchase an assault rifle, not 18. As if an assault rifle is comparable to a pack of cigarettes or bottle of beer. In a way it is; get your 21-year-old buddy to buy your assault rifle and ammo. Or maybe they’ll consider giving up their bump stocks so that killers can nail only one casualty at a shot instead of 75 in rapid fire. Is this supposed to be pacifying? What a charade.

When Wayne La Pierre has the temerity to accuse the parents and children affected at Parkland of “exploiting” the massacre as they rightfully implore our president and Congress for real, effective and common-sense gun laws, that’s when I know Mr. LaPierre and the NRA are dinosaurs. Let’s hope they go extinct before our nation. —Leo Keane, Whitefish

Will Trump win the immigration debate?

The immigration issue, which remains unsolved, is just going to get uglier. The reason? Sen. Schumer doesn’t want a total immigration bill passed. And why? Because of politics.

President Trump has Schumer in a box. Trump has delivered the conservatives to this issue with his offer of 1.8 million Dreamers eligible for some form of citizenship. That’s a lot further than what conservatives feel they could accept, but Trump, being a forceful leader, will bring them along. But Schumer is just a politician, not a leader like Trump, so he can’t move his base at all. He knows, like most informed people, that no reform can happen without the wall and an end to chain migration and the lottery system.

But Schumer has problems never discussed. First of all he just can’t let Trump have another success even if it is good for our country. He just can’t allow that. Secondly, he knows the liberals have no other issues to run on — the tax bill is passed, the economy’s great, Trump is leading on foreign policy and the Affordable Care Act is in shambles. There is nothing left. Liberals believe their only option is to continue fanning the flames of racism and division, which means no compromise that would lead to the passage of this bill.

The results are foreseeable. Trump, knowing his duty to uphold the law, sooner or later will have to start deportation. The left will respond as usual: with marches, demonstrations and violence in the form of burning, looting and destruction in an effort to bludgeon America citizens to accept their desires for no borders and unlimited illegal immigrants flooding into our country.

Quite possibly this violence will lead to bloodshed, which would be a high price to pay just for politics, particularly since a compromise to solve this problem is available now. If it isn’t accomplished, the fault is clearly Schumer’s as well as our own Sen. Tester, and any bloodshed is certainly on their hands. —Mark Agather, Kalispell

Local VA care is good, but system is not

In regards to the front-page article last week about the veteran, I am happy he got his needs taken care of, but my experience has been somewhat different in dealing with the VA health system.

In over 20 years of going to the local clinic (and that’s from just after it opened in Columbia Falls) I have never had to wait more than 15 minutes past the time it was scheduled. On top of that all the nurses have been great and the two main doctors I have seen through the years could not have better — from diagnosing my cancer to blood clots in my lungs and literally saved my life more than once.

All was not great otherwise though. I have many times had appointments canceled because of doctors leaving the VA system and have been given wrong information a couple of times. It’s a shame we have to travel to Fort Harrison some 200 miles away for some care, but out of all the hospitals, and there have been many I have been in, there were none in which I got better care.

Back in the day (as they say) the care was better because those we send to Washington got involved with the Veterans Choice program. I personally have been threatened with collection because the program did not pay the bill as they were supposed to. I totally disagree with the opinion in the article that the program was well thought out. No, what they did was give Choice a ton of money to sit on and then pay out as they saw fit, and with all the lawyers in Washington, they were not smart enough to have a clause where they could cancel or have a non-performance clause written into it.

It bothers me that the veteran in the article was able to get his care locally when we all don’t get the same option, but good for him. In the article it states he was taken care of here in Kalispell by a private provider and I would like to know just who that was as almost all now work for the hospital. I think the whole system is like everything the government is in charge of, and unless we demand change by kicking the freeloaders out of office who oversee these programs, we will just have to take what they hand out. —Glen Hook, Kalispell