GUNS AREN’T THE PROBLEM
Why is it that every community leader who professes to be
upset with the killing in our city points to firearms as the cause? The recent
“no questions asked” gun turn-in program is a case in point.
Church and city leaders sanctimoniously declare that anyone
who turns in a firearm will be allowed to walk away without penalty. What’s
never mentioned is that the miscreants most likely to use firearms in criminal
activities — legally owned or otherwise — are the least likely to disarm
themselves voluntarily. Those who have an illegal firearm have it because they
want it or think they need it. They’re not likely to turn it in, questions or
no questions.
The last turn-in program collected a significant number of
broken, rusty, and otherwise generally unusable pieces. Yet here we are, doing
the same thing again. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
repeatedly but expecting a different result.
And let us consider that a significant portion of the
violence in our fair city is accomplished with the blade rather than the gun.
Let’s have a turn-in program and collect pocket and kitchen knives.
The problem, of course, is not the tool. It is the social
milieu that tolerates and even teaches violence as the preferred method of
conflict resolution and property acquisition. What we have is emotion in its
purest form, the overwhelming of society’s behavioral norms by survival
instinct. In the poverty-stricken city center, drugs and gangs are the means by
which survival chances are perceived to be increased. Violence stems from the
wars between factions fighting for finite resources. Ignorance results from the
struggle and simultaneously feeds it.
The solution is not welfare. Welfare is a soporific that can
stifle initiative in the second generation: why work, when the government will
provide? The solution isn’t opportunity; opportunity is useless to those not
equipped to recognize it. With well-meaning largesse, we have nurtured
generations of disadvantaged people who are equipped neither to take advantage
of opportunity nor to recognize opportunity when it appears.
The solution to the violence lies in education, a long-term,
expensive (and therefore politically unpopular) process that must start with the
very young and be nurtured into adulthood, using adequate facilities and
qualified teachers to help combat failures of family support. It will take two
generations, because it must start with a new generation in preschool and
finally take hold with the children of those children.
But hey, a gun turn-in program is easier, cheaper, and
faster, and has the proper politically-correct cachet. Shucks, everybody knows
that the mere presence of a gun (or knife) will turn the most
gentle soul into a homicidal maniac. Must be some sort of noxious outgassing from the alloys.
Funny: it doesn’t happen so much in the ‘burbs,
though. Maybe it’s not the tools after all.
Rich Young, Rochester
WATER WORKS
Regarding the proposal to re-water the old Erie canal bed in downtown Rochester:
Former City Councilmember Brian Curran says Rochester
needs to create jobs, and he doesn’t think re-watering the canal will do that.
What does he think creates jobs: more COMIDA tax subsidies?
Re-watering the canal will increase foot traffic and
tourism. It will make downtown more attractive to live in than the suburbs.
Where there are people and tourism, there are jobs. Does Curran not think this
would create jobs in the form of restaurants, shops, bars, and coffee houses?
The objection that the canal will freeze in the winter is
beyond ridiculous. On a frozen canal in the winter there can be such activities
as skating, hockey, and curling. That would attract tourists. What will filling
in the old canal bed do?
Rochester needs
to redefine itself if we expect to stop the freefall of our local economy. We
can no longer rely on Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb to support this city.
Nor can we count on throwing our tax dollars away on things like COMIDA.
Tourism offers us a new way to bring revenue into this city,
creating jobs and keeping people here. We have plenty to offer if we would just
pull our heads out of our collective you-know-what.
Michael Noto. Rochester
THE CRISIS IN OUR SCHOOLS
“Dropped out? Where the students went” (May 31) reinforces
what many of us know to be true: like the majority of mid-sized and large urban
school districts in the US,
the Rochester school district is in
deep crisis. And that crisis includes super-high dropout rates and super-low
graduation rates. As Aloma Cason pointed out, the two
are not necessarily one and the same.
I know Ms. Cason personally, and she is among the best
information analysts in the school district. Yet it is important to be careful
about positive spin, critical issues, and dire situations.
Ms. Cason says that data tells us that “we need to get to
these kids when they are in third, fourth, and fifth grades so they will be
better prepared for ninth grade.” I am certain — and in fact, mounds of
research informs us — that we need to reach students way before third,
fourth, and fifth grade, especially in basic skills development: reading,
writing, math, listening, and reasoning. Research clearly indicates that by
third and fourth grades, many of our students have a critical lack of those
skills.
This is among the most serious issues faced by urban
students, not only in Rochester,
but throughout the nation. It is an issue that requires a total community
response.
The onus of responsibility to produce a solution is on us.
What are we waiting for?
Howard Eagle, Rochester
WRITING TO CITY
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Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.
Our guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and
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publish letters that have been sent to other media — and we don’t publish form letters generated by activist groups. While
we don’t restrict length, letters of under 350 words
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from the same writer more often than about once every two months.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.
