March 13 Letters to the Editor

Much has changed

What has happened to us? When I was in high school in the early 1940s, during hunting season I would take my 20-gauge shotgun and two boxes of shells (50 rounds) to school on the bus. I would store them in my locker at school all day Friday.

When school was out on Friday, I would take them out of my locker, get on the bus, go out to the Koller Ranch and hunt with the Kollers during the weekend. Monday morning I would get back on the bus with my shotgun and what shells I had left and store them in my locker at school all day Monday. Then after school, I would ride home on the bus with the shotgun and remaining shells.

You know what has changed? ...

We didn't have TV, video games or the drug problem we have now. You can't turn on TV without finding a station where someone is shooting someone else, and kids weren't shooting people on their video games.

As far as the drug problem, is making marijuana legal in the state of Washington going to help the drug problem? I don't think so. Let's put the blame on these school shootings where it belongs - not with the guns that law-abiding gun owners have.

I have been a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association since Feb. 15, 1955.

My son, grandson and 4-year-old great-grandson are also NRA life members. We need to make sure we uphold the Second Amendment.

Elton Brown

Pomeroy

Saw letter in print

I want to thank the editors for publishing my letter. I am the lady waiting for Obamacare. Thanks again. I know there are many more of us.

Jean La Belle

Lewiston

Moeller's bill leaves void

Approximately 70 percent of Washington state parents who divorced over the past two years ended up with shared-custody arrangements. Yet the child support calculator in this state assumes that children of divorce live exclusively with one parent.

The 2011 child support legislative work group made a consensus recommendation that Washington state implement a "residential credit" to automatically adjust child support payments when parenting is shared - something that is already the law in 35 states. Yet this residential credit is nowhere to be found in House Bill 1027, intended to implement the recommendations of the child support legislative work group.

Why? The State Bar Association has a stranglehold on the Legislature and lawyers do well by the current system whereby the only way to get credit for shared parenting is through an appeal to the discretion of a judge. Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, the sponsor of House Bill 1027, has stated that it is an "embarrassment" that we don't have a child support residential credit. Yet this embarrassment will continue if we don't demand that legislators serve the citizens of this state rather than the legal profession.

David Brown

Pullman

Spend money at home

I see in the Tribune that one of the workers said 10 years and $60 billion of our tax money (was spent) as the workers in Baghdad stated. They are destroying what is built for them and killing each other just like before.

We are in the same position in Afghanistan as we were before - billions of dollars and still climbing.

John Kerry has authorized $250 million to Egypt. That money could be spent here at home.

Now that Barack Obama wants all of these illegals in, that's when you will see a bigger mess in this country. Things like food stamp problems and Social Security problems.

Robert G. Dean

Lewiston