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What happened to youth sports being fun, and learning lessons on winning and losing? Today, youth sports are about zero-tolerance policies for kids who are as young as 10 and 12 for not showing up to a game, even though the life lesson and opportunity they would miss the game for outweighs the game. Notice how I use "game" so many times? Because that is what youth sports are. Games. Now, though, parents and coaches are all about creating the next great professional athlete or living vicariously through their kids. Youth sports is harming kids, and not nurturing them. Travel baseball, travel soccer, travel basketball. All of it is just for the money. Sad and ridiculous.

Ben Kroeger, Canton

I take issue with Mackinac Island Fire Chief Jason St. Onge, in the May 3, 2023 Free Press front page regarding two fires caused by e-bike batteries on the Island ("Mackinac Island residents, historic businesses warned of e-bike battery fires.") My issue is that his comments and broad brush strokes against all e-bike batteries are inflammatory. I am disappointed that the Free Press offered no insight from e-bike manufacturers but instead slapped this story on the front page. As a result of the uneven coverage of the issue, more municipalities and/or businesses will ban e-bike batteries. E-Bikes already are VERY misunderstood by a lot of the general public and now add the batteries to that and you may very quickly shut down a growing and viable means of recreation for many many people.

Betsy Taylor, Beulah, Mich.

If the government can mandate safety features like seat belts and air bags before a car is sold, illegalize flavored e-cigs and the like (but not marijuana gummies) to protect the kids, then surely they can demand social media platforms and gaming sites not to operate unless they can assure protection for children.

Gary McDonald, Rochester

I agree with Lawrence Rosenstock who wrote a letter that appeared in the April 30 issue of the Detroit Free Press, "Transgender Daughter Wants to be Left Alone."

I have a 14-year-old transgender girl in my family who now is her authentic self, happy and successful in school. She is a beautiful person, supported by school staff, friends and family. She too just wants to be left alone, enjoy her life and be treated like any other girl. It's as simple as that!

Rene Vander Eyk, Rochester Hills

On April 29 of last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed rules to end the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. The FDA has had a full year to take comments and now it is time for action: The Biden Administration must finalize these rules to protect youth in Michigan and across the U.S., and address health inequities in our country.

Tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Michigan, killing over 16,000 residents each year. More than 17% of adult Michiganders smoke, and 25% of high school students use a tobacco product. On top of that, smoking costs our state more than $5 billion in direct medical costs and over $11 billion in lost productivity each year, placing a state and federal tax burden of over $1,100 on each Michigan household.

This is a tremendous opportunity to save lives and reduce the toll of tobacco on the health of Michiganders.In the first 13-17 months of removing menthol cigarettes from the marketplace, one study estimates 923,000 smokers nationwide would quit.

Join the American Lung Association in urging the Biden Administration to finalize the proposed rules and end the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars by August to save lives and protect our youth by asking President Joe Biden to finalize these rules at Lung.org/Stop-Menthol.

Amanda Holm, Livonia

The gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word, fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.

The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies the militia would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires. Those words are from the former conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger regarding the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association. It appears fitting, considering the current actions or non-actions of the Republican Party when it comes to gun legislation, to have this description of the Second Amendment: The money of the gun lobby, being necessary to the survival of politicians, the right to madmen to slaughter children shall not be infringed. This must be their position and what they believe. Why else would there not be any meaningful policies and action to end all this unnecessary gun violence?

Jim Jeziorowski, Wayne

Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters or letters@freepress.com.

Read this article:
Letters to the editor: Something's gone very wrong in youth sports - Detroit Free Press

A hundred years ago, migratory birds were being wiped out at an alarming rate, with mega-serious population declines. Legal restrictions were duly processed, at the national level, limiting the gauge and number of shotgun shells that were legal. Today our shotguns for hunting such birds are legal, as they are plugged to three shots max. The populations of migratory birds have recovered.

The point is: Restrictions on the Second Amendment have precedent and are current.

In my opinion, we need a well regulated militia. Todays version would be a registry. I would want it to be non-governmental, as in private.

Ponder a law that, by 2026, an owner of a military grade assault rifle would need to register it with proper ID. If its stolen, report it. If not, it is, officially, legally yours.

Trevor Hall Jr. Orlando

While searching for tickets for an upcoming event at Hard Rock Live at Universal CityWalk, I see shows for Bebe Rexha called Best Fn Night Of My Life, Ted Nugent called Adios Mofos, comedy shows by Dane Cook, Anthony Jeselnik and other shows that are arguably adult-centric. Yet, the only one indicating that it is age-restricted to 18 and over show is one by Jinkx Monsoon, a noted drag queen. I can say with almost 100% certainty that the chances of any minors attending the drag show are pretty limited, compared to those likely to attend any of the other shows mentioned with content that may warp their young impressionable minds. The hypocrisy is laughable if it wasnt so obvious who is being targeted here.

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Alex Jimenez Winter Park

I want to thank Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-led Congress for making Florida the freest state to have a homeowners insurance increase of $1,000. Where are the retirees like myself to find a 33% increase in our insurance coverage?

Maybe if theyd spend less time in attacking our schools, LGBTQ and trans community and Disney, they could address our insurance problems and needs. All that freedom sure doesnt pay my bills.

Boyd Rasmussen Casselberry

Our state has been experiencing the effects of climate change and I worry about the future and the climate extremes that coming generations will experience. April is Earth Month, and the theme this year is Invest in People and the Planet. So, I wonder why big banks like Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo are still investing in the expansion of dirty fossil fuels that are causing such climate destruction. According to the report Banking on Climate Chaos, these banks have invested more than $1 trillion in fossil fuels since 2016.

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says that feasible, effective, and low-cost solutions are readily available but arent being scaled up at the necessary speed. This spring, the big banks should adopt the pending shareholder resolutions on climate change at their annual meetings, commit to accelerating their investments in clean energy and divest from coal, oil, and gas.

Tom Caffery Orlando

Go here to see the original:
We've restricted 2nd Amendment before | Letters - Orlando Sentinel

Those of us who are not gun fetishists are supposed to "keep our powder dry" on the subject, but it must be said: The Second Amendment is as antique as a muzzle-loaded long gun, and should be treated as a historical artifact.

We're not supposed to even whisper such things because the NRA and right-wing extremists have sensible Americans including many gun owners so bullied and cowed that we feel we are only allowed to hope for sensible gun-safety legislation around the edges of their highly profitable assault on American lives.

We've said it before, but it is always worth repeating for the millions of younger people coming to voting age each year who may not have considered it before: It doesn't take a grammarian or a constitutional scholar to tell you that the opening clause of the Second Amendment is obviously conditional:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Meaning, so long as a militia of citizens is necessary (and a well-regulated one, at that), then what follows is true. But only if that first part pertains.

It no longer pertains and hasn't since the modern National Guard wasformally established in 1916. We've got the Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force and even that Space Force thing, as well as the National Guard, with members who swear an oath to both their state and their federal governments. (I note that dual allegiance for all the anti-federalists still lurking out there, seething about some "tyranny" of the federal government, while at the state and local levels you busy yourself with taking away voting rights, reproductive rights, public schools and public libraries.)

The six branches of the armed forces, including the National Guard. No other militia need apply. It's covered.

If you want to help protect the interests of your state and your nation, assist citizens during emergencies, understand tactical maneuvers and carry a gun (and learn how to operate it), you can sign uphere orhere. Join the Coast Guard. Or you can become a police officer. It turns out we need better ones. Your service will be deeply appreciated, if only by lip service from the right-wingers who drone on and on about how much they love the military and the cops.

So, the need for a well-regulated militia, crucial to the early history of the country, is no longer in play. We need to rewrite the amendment, dispensing with the oddball capitalization and punctuation, to fit the times:

The right of the people to serve in the armed services or the National Guard, or to serve as law enforcement officers if duly qualified, shall not be infringed.

I dropped the prefatory clause, since everyone ignores it anyway. And that word "militia" has gotten especially confusing of late. Now the thing is up to date.

But don't take my word for it. After the Parkland, Florida, school shootings of 2018, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrotean op-edin the New York Times describing the Second Amendment as "a relic of the 18th century" and arguing it should be repealed. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, said in 1991 that the NRA's reading of the Second Amendment was "a fraud" and said that if he were writing the Bill of Rights today he'd flat-out dump it.

We've got the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard, the Air Force and even that Space Force thing, as well as the National Guard. We're covered. No other "militia" need apply.

The current batch of right-wing Supreme Court justices sponsored by the Federalist Society have furtherdiscredited the high court by pretending they can peer into the hearts and minds of the founders as a way to keep the country hobbled on this issue. It's always worth noting (especially, again, for younger voters) that the Heller decision, in which Justice Antonin Scalia simply divorced the "keep and bear arms" part of Second Amendment from any connection to militia membership, was in 2008, not way back at the founding of the republic.

We don't live in colonial times, people. We live in these-here times days of conspiracy theories, white nationalism and so-called government leaders who do all they can to prove government cannot work, who praise despots and work with them to undermine democracy, who call journalists "the enemy of the people" and dehumanize their political opponents.

OK, none of that is entirely new to American history, but today we live in a country where there are more guns than people, where there are more mass shootings than days on the calendar, where Fox News has gun-clutching people living in a constant state of paranoia and fear, whereyoung people are increasingly paying with their lives.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

If we could somehow summon up Franklin or Madison or Hamilton to speak to us on the gun issue, I imagine they'd have a lot to say.One suspects the founders would take a look at modern handguns and assault weapons, learn how they operate and tell us a bit more about the intent of the Second Amendment. They would say, I think, that the citizens' right to safety and the pursuit of happiness far outweighs any imagined individual right to own a weapon of war or carry any kind of gun in public.

Those who claim to be both "pro-life" and "pro-gun" should be aware that the rest of us consider those terms absurdly paired and we see through the marketing fluff of "pro-life" used in place of "anti-abortion," as well as the "pro-life" willingness to let women die in childbirth an abandon kids to lives of poverty. But in this country, where politicians of a certain stripe are busy teaching us that up is down and facts aren't facts, and where the NRA owns many of those politicians, we see people being gunned down every day in every venue one can imagine shopping centers, grocery stores, movie theaters, concerts, hospitals, churches, schools.

The vast majority of citizens want sensible gun regulations now. Parents and younger Americans of all political stripes are frustrated and deeply unhappy with gun culture, with all its simmering fear and dread about the next news bulletin and days of fruitless discussion of the shooter and his motive, and the hopelessness created by talk of the "slippery slope" if we take any action to stop the carnage.

This is what political operatives on the right have done so well for decades: They work the refs and move the goalposts until any objections to their aims are no longer recognized as legitimate. That "well regulated Militia being necessary" becomes (courtesy of the NRA and Scalia) no militia need apply becomes a tradition with deep roots in our culture becomes a God-given right.

It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic, and if guns weren't now the leading cause of death of younger Americans.

Young people recoil at the Second Amendment argument even more than they cringe at that out-of-fashion furniture their parents have piled up in the basement and are now offering them. Thanks, but no thanks.

We parents would like our children (and grandchildren) to be safe when they are at the movies, in a mall, in church, at school. All of us would like to feel safe in public spaces. We don't need to hear a single damn thing froma criminal organization like the NRA or from politicians in the pockets of that criminal organization.

The Second Amendment is an antique curiosity laughably outmoded for our times. It's time for it to go.

We must say it precisely because we have been so bullied for so long into believing that we must not or cannot say it.One day, if we can keep our democracy intact against the frantic efforts of the self-proclaimed American "patriots," younger Americans will band together to do what they did with laws against marijuana and will do in short order with restrictions on reproductive rights: They'll put the Second Amendment right where it belongs, in the dustbin of history, already piled way too high with spent shells and needless deaths.

Read more

about America's epidemic of gun violence

Read more from the original source:
The Second Amendment is a ludicrous historical antique: Time for it to go - Salon

It was with interest that I read Gary Berudes recent letter to the editor where he stated that gun control will never work in this country.

I read it with interest because I am currently in my 38th year of working in public education in North Dakota and Minnesota. Just this week, I participated in yet another staff training session dealing with active shooters in school buildings, as coincidence would have it, a day prior to the anniversary of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School.

Over those 38 years, I have lost track of how many staff development sessions have been devoted to active shooter drills. Every day that I am at work, I consider where I am in the building, the location of the nearest exit, watching students as they enter the building in the morning, and monitoring the main entrance of the school when I pass by and when on bus duty in the afternoon. For those of you who do not work in public schools, know that the security of students and staff is close to the forefront of the consciousness of some staff members, and that fact is disheartening to me at times.

I readily admit that I am not an expert on the options available to keep guns from people who intend to do harm, and I am not a policy maker. I defer to the science that will lead to those decisions. I do, however, question how many of my colleagues in education across the country and how many students will be sacrificed on the altar of the Second Amendment. Has it come to the point that we simply throw up our hands, say that there is nothing that can be done, and accept somehow that the deaths and injuries inflicted upon staff and students are an unavoidable by-product of the right to bear arms? Are we, as a country, ready to be fatalists and say, It is what it is when the next school shooting happens, which it surely will? Is our only response Our thoughts and prayers, which, by the way, have never prevented a future school shooting?

If these things are true, then I am even more disheartened than when I am monitoring my current school workplace.

Rich Veit is a resident of Lake Park, Minn.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

See the article here:
Letter: How many lives will be sacrificed on the altar of the Second Amendment? - INFORUM

HOWELL (WWJ) -- In response to Michigan's recently-passed gun safety legislation, officials in Livingston County have drafted a resolution championing the Second Amendment and showing their support for the county's sheriff, who refuses to enforce the new laws.

Monday evening at 6 p.m., the Livingston County Board of Commissioners plans to vote in favor of a resolution that would name Livingston a "constitutional county" and codify their refusal to put money or resources toward enforcing the new gun control laws.

According to the resolution, a constitutional county is defined as "a place of refuge for the law-abiding citizens in regards to the citizens' rights... including but not limited to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."

This potential resolution comes just days after Governor Whitmer signed into effect a third gun safety bill.

These laws were introduced and passed by the Democrat-controlled state house and senate in the wake of the tragic campus shooting at Michigan State University in February as well as the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School.

Proponents of the laws cite strong public support and say they will help reduce gun deaths in the state. Those opposed say they will infringe on people's legal and constitutional right to carry.

In that vein, the Livingston County resolution affirms the roles of the sheriff and prosecuting attorney in upholding state laws and encourages these officials to use "their utmost discretion" when enforcing laws related to constitutional rights.

Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, meanwhile, has said he will not enforce red flag laws.

Additionally, the board will not authorize any funds, resources, personnel or facilities in order to implement the new legislation.

The resolution will be opened up to public comment at tonight's board meeting, held over Zoom. Instructions on how to join the meeting can be found here.

Featured Image Photo Credit: Getty Images

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Livingston County resolution supports 2nd amendment - WWJ