This is Viewpoints for Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015

Time to talk

Not long ago I purchased a pistol at a local gun dealer's store. I didn't have a carry license so the dealer had to call the FBI hotline to determine that I wasn't a convicted felon. It took about five minutes and I bought my pistol and left. Recently I bought a shotgun from the same dealer. Since I had my carry license reinstated, he didn't have to call the hotline. There was absolutely no inconvenience to me in either instance.

Mitchell Clark of Macon said in The Telegraph this past Wednesday that "liberal gun control advocates" cannot be reasoned with on this issue. I just pointed out that I am a gun owner and I have no problem with reasonable gun control. Background checks are not unreasonable, and I believe they need to be extended to gun shows.

Recently, about two blocks from my house, a teenage boy shot and killed another teenage boy. One shot and one young life lost and another ruined. A few days before that happened, an 11-year-old girl was shot while playing in her yard. Every day The Telegraph reports more shootings. The United States has more gun violence than any other country on the planet combined. Is it unreasonable to say we have a problem? I don't think so.

Folks like Clark need to understand that just because someone doesn't see things exactly the way they do doesn't make them unreasonable. Gun control is no more unreasonable than control of alcohol, drugs or motor vehicles.

Nobody is advocating confiscating people's guns. First of all it would be logistically impossible to do so. Secondly, any politician to propose such a thing would certainly not be reelected. But we desperately need to address this issue without NRA propaganda clouding it and the knee jerk reactions of overly enthusiastic gun lovers. It's far past time we as a nation had a reasonable discussion about what we need to do to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.

-- Terry Thompson

Bonaire

Crime and taxes too high

The recent debacle concerning the Sheriffs Office being unable to corral crime in Ingleside is at best pathetic. Where have they had success? Drugs are so rampant (possibly cause of escalation of crimes) that many areas need attention. How many (if any) of law enforcement are on the take? Before you question that, you had best check the records. Since Ingleside runs from Riverside to Forest Hill Road, that encompasses hundreds of homes and miles of roads. The current taxes being paid for adequate protection runs in the millions of dollars. One of the area's richest families anchors Ingleside. How many of those homes are going to pay $25 a month for a deputy to cruise that vast area? How are those funds collected and who will manage it? Are sheriff cars to be used? Why? Once spotted, they can just time the robbery.

To cover that area properly it will take over an hour. So a five minute or less crime can be carried out dozens of times in 24 hours in that vast area where there are roughly 1,000 homes. Do the math. We are already paying $900 to $9,000 a year in property taxes and then $15 for garbage, plus seven percent sales tax and $20 to $700 car tag fees per car. Add 41.5-cents per gallon on gasoline purchases, and that fellow taxpayers, are not all of the taxes we pay.

To many, $25 is peanuts, but to some, it's quite a lot. There are peak times for crimes, but with extremely loud alarms with Neighborhood Watch and sadly, bars on windows, all are more apt to reduce crime than patrolling.

The recent head count at the Sheriff's Office is 700. Their budget? Just maybe it would be prudent to add to patrol and vastly reduce administrative. This is true of all of our governmental agencies, but you can bet it will never happen.

-- Joe Hubbard

Macon

System not working

Our justice system states that those charged are "innocent until proven guilty." It seems to me that many now believe "you are guilty until proven innocent." When did we change from a people of compassion and mercy into a people of judgment and condemnation? I mean to provoke.

The awful truth is that our Bibb County jail is full of people considered "guilty until proven innocent." And to add insult to injury, most do not get their physical needs met unless someone on the outside is able to send them money to provide for their needs. The sad truth is that most individuals who land in jail already suffer from poverty. The poor are the ones who remain in jail for a year or more until their trial because they do not have the funds to pay bail or hire private lawyers. Many feel their only option is to plead guilty to crimes they are not guilty of in order to leave a jail that is intolerable. It is a travesty.

When a person pleads guilty to a charge they are innocent of because there is no way they are seen to be "innocent until proven guilty" in our society that is a travesty of the worst kind. I do not have the answer but I want to provoke us to pray and ask God to forgive us and to give us wisdom because our ways are not working in our local justice system.

-- Donna Gray

Macon

Still no proof

The theory of evolution is championed by anti-God advocates and presented, viewed and generally accepted as factual, when in fact it's an unsubstantiated, harebrained hypothesis. The meticulous searching of every nick and cranny on earth for the pass 160-plus years has proven that.

The smorgasbord of prehistoric, recently extinct and present day vertebrate and invertebrate animals (including man) which have and are inhabiting the earth are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. Meaning the earth should be saturated with irrefutable proof that these animals and man were in fact the product of evolution, but it isn't. Meaning they have always been what they were and are.

Add to this fact a miraculous life supporting solar system containing a planet with salt and fresh water, an incredible complex atmosphere, an extremely complicated perpetual ecosystem supporting a diversified perpetual, genetically pure, animal life all harmoniously intertwined and you have Genesis' account of creation.

Yet anti-God activists have and continue to use physical similarities between select primates and man, freaks and oddities of nature and animals adapting to survive an ever changing environment to successfully scrub God from America's conscious. And there's literally tens of millions of Christians from every domination and intellectuals from every profession who believe, endorse and teach this cockamamie theory. Amazing.

-- Travis L. Middleton

Peach County

No copay increases

Please vote to reject the TRICARE prescription copay increases that the Senate is pushing. Frankly, me and my family are very upset at seeing our benefits package suffer one hit after another as national leaders view service members like every other citizen. A military career is very difficult and military families sacrifice a great deal. They need a solid health care benefit now, and look forward to a health care benefit for life, prepaid by 20 or 30 potentially deadly years of service. Yet each year, Congress seems to chip away at the healthcare benefit for these men and women and their families.

Please act now to stop this constant attack on our men and women in uniform. A Senate proposal for the NDAA is to increase TRICARE prescription copayments for the third time in four years, then to institute programmed further increases over the next nine years. Come on. I am a member of the Air Force Sergeants Association, and I know AFSA and the Military Coalition have repeatedly pointed out other DoD health care areas that are actual waste that have never been enacted. And I know my family and I have earned our health care benefits. I strongly feel that these further copayment cuts need to be stopped.

I hope you'll agree with me that military members deserve better than this from our national leaders that we already pay enough for this nation through our service and sacrifice and that further TRICARE cost increases are not justified.

-- Earl M. Strobush

Hawkinsville

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 9:42 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015 ."