Has the Dem party given up on climate change?

Between Biden opening up more of Alaska to drilling for oil and Polis urging cities to build and build more, it is getting harder to support the Democratic Party in its current mode. Apparently, it has thrown in the towel about combatting climate change and conserving resources. Addressing gun violence, homelessness, drug addiction, inflation and rising property taxes would seem more immediate issues for life here.

“Bedrooms are for people” is a rallying cry for affordable housing, but, looking around Colorado cities, tents also are for people.

— Robert Porath, Boulder

Not all news stories published have value

The April 6 Camera carried an article in the “In Brief” section titled “Brazil Man kills four at Daycare Center with a hatchet.” What possible news value does such an article contain? Does this fall into the category of “Inquiring minds want to know” or “All the news that’s fit to print”? Not in my book.

— Bob D’Alessandro, Longmont

Second Amendment writers would be appalled

The men responsible for the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution created something unique. These were intelligent men, visionaries, but men of their time; they saw the world through their late 18th-century eyes. As history has shown, these men tried their best but made mistakes. Some of those mistakes were colossal.

For example, rather than settle the question of slavery, they punted the problem down the road to secure the Southern states’ ratification of the Constitution. We know how that turned out. They also failed to recognize the need to include female citizens as anything more than chattel. That mistake still lingers today. Their mistakes with the Second Amendment were repugnant but even harder to see through ignorant, unseeing eyes. Eyes unable to see the future tragedies they had set in motion. Few, if any, of these leaders lived beyond 1836; the most advanced personal weapon they could have seen was the percussion rifle. The rifle had a fire rate of two to three shots per minute.

Today, in service to our country, we have the M134 Minigun, capable of 6,000 rounds per minute, 100 rounds a second. Such a rate of fire should astonish anyone of any era. But, hopefully, we do not have any miniguns in private hands in this country. Instead, we have 20 million A-15-style weapons capable of 45 rounds per minute and easily modified to a much higher rate of fire.

These writers of the Second Amendment would be appalled how their lack of vision, as impossible as it was to comprehend then, has caused such bloodshed, such sorrow. They would not let it stand. They would change it. Why can’t we?

“There is something deeply hypocritical about praying over a problem you are unwilling to resolve.” — Miroslav Volf

— Jim Davies, Longmont