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EIRs should study
regulatory bodies
Your recent letters about environmental impact reports and related articles that deride all developers both fail to address the relevant issue.
Environmental impact reports should also be required of regulatory bodies to evaluate whether the sum total of their efforts is providing enough housing for growing communities where the jobs are, or whether they are actually making the environment worse by creating longer commutes in older cars through dozens of communities as these commuters drive by and through all kinds of things that have been “saved” — except places to build housing.
Thomas Scott
Morgan Hill
Gun violence will get
worse before better
The issue of trying to restrict gun sales at this point is moot; as the saying goes, “That horse has left the barn.”
With more guns in this country than people, it’s no wonder that we are the only civilized country in the world with the problem of mass shootings. I’m all for continuing to push for bans on the sale of assault weapons, large-capacity magazines, etc., as they have no place or use by the general public.
But one wonders if we are a society so bad that we have to identify what a mass shooting is by the number of people who perished. The Second Amendment was written in 1791 and is a couple of centuries out of date. We no longer need a “well regulated militia” made up of ordinary citizens because we have armed forces to perform those duties. This situation is only likely to get worse, not better.
Robert Szilasie
Gilroy
Gun letter missed
element of intention
In response to the letter “Keep gun deaths in perspective” (Page A6, Jan. 27) — which compares numbers of deaths by auto accidents and COVID to deaths by guns — misses the important difference.
Most shooting deaths and injuries that have horrified the public in recent years have been acts of homicide, of hate, of domestic terrorism. Gun violence hurts the victims and their families most, but also traumatizes, to some degree, all of us who pay attention.
Suzy Brown
San Carlos
When will gun policy
reflect the science
Re. “Keep gun deaths in perspective,” Page A6, Jan. 27:
A more comprehensive analysis of gun-caused deaths in the United States should include all deaths from firearms, including suicide, which accounts for 54% of gun deaths. According to the CDC, of the 45,000 gun deaths in 2020, over 24,000 were by suicide. As Anthony Stegman points out, COVID has killed 1.1 million Americans. Comparing our death rates from those causes to Japan is striking. Japan has only 10 gun deaths per year and our death rate from COVID is 680% higher than Japan’s.
Political campaigns promoting prolific gun ownership and unrestricted rights that ignore the science supported by CDC COVID recommendations have clearly resulted in a shocking number of deaths in the United States from both firearms and COVID. Science and common sense should determine our laws based on policies promoting the protection of lives but these are tragically lacking in our country with deadly consequences.
Warren Seifert
Gilroy
Americans support
gun control, not bans
I would like to reply to Anthony Stegman’s wonder about the hue and cry from those calling for prohibitions on gun ownership. There is not a hue and cry to prohibit gun ownership. There is a hue and cry for gun control. According to the Pew Research Center: 87% of Americans support preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns, 81% support making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks, 66% (2/3) support creating a federal government database to track all gun sales.
The Declaration of Independence writes that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. According to the CDC, in 2020, over 19,000 American’s lost their lives to the liberty of guns. This in turn affected the pursuit of happiness of those affected by the aftermath.
Charles De Vogelaere
Mountain View
Train extension costly
and unnecessary
A nice article Jan. 21 says, “Caltrain leg to S.F. among the world’s costliest projects,” noting the project’s $6.7 billion price tag (Page A1). Yet recent news is that there isthe equivalent of 14.7 Salesforce Towers of empty office space in the city, and enough space to accommodate 114,000-150,000 workers — workers who aren’t there.
So one wonders who the $6.7 billion tree in expense extension is for other than the politicians who want some pet project that they can say that they got done — and in the process wasted $6.7 billion of our taxpayer money — when the dollar per average passenger will be astronomic, considering how much empty office space there is in San Francisco. Have the politicians explain that.
Jay Dee
Burlingame
Source: www.mercurynews.com