Ask biz Vizz Before Buying

As a consumer, I vote with my feet. I prefer to give my business to companies that I perceive as improving, or being less detrimental to, first the local community, then this region, then the health of the planet (“App Rates Out Corporations,” February 7, 2013).

Perception is the key. With knowledge, we can make informed decisions, and in the over-advertised, hyped world I live in, it is hard to locate the good info. So this app sounds like a good source for the things I value.

But, as for any source of information, I have to determine its level of accuracy. For all information has to be seen through the filter of the accuracy and bias of its source.

Capitalism needs informed consumers in order for the market forces to work and be properly self-regulating, and as this country’s founding fathers noted, a healthy democracy needs informed citizens who can effectively participate in their government.

It seems to me that the forces that would try to pervert or obscure information (as the political process and PR often do) are detrimental both to a healthy democracy and a healthy capitalist economy, and that those forces that provide accurate information are a benefit.

Janus Ternullo via Internet

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Best Intention

No Intention (“Behind the Beat,” February 7, 2013) flat out is the best pop-punk band going, and I don’t mean just in the area. Great tunes and awesome live performances.

Matt Kline via Internet

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Guns “Not a Disease”

The Valley Advocate circulates in an area with the strictest gun controls in the country. But the reader [of “Gun Lobby Suppresses Information,” January 31, 2013] is left with the impression that one can almost buy or steal a gun from a local convenience store with ease. This is not the case.

Do we ever get honest statistics? Guns are not a disease, nor a product that has very many defects that result in accidents. Do we really need a $2.6 million study? We recently had a case where some idiots were playing Russian roulette and one of the players was shot. This is criminal negligence, but hardly an accident.

How many people went hunting or target shooting, how often, and how many accidents were there? We only read of the accidents. Is a gun more likely to be involved in the death of a family member than to be used to kill in self defense? But we never read of instances where the would-be victim takes out his gun and the would-be attacker decides to go away. No statistics are kept. And there are a lot of reasons for the would-be victim to be quiet. The local authorities may decide that he had the wrong type of permit, or he used excessive force. So we do not really know how many such cases there are.

I also do not think we need a $2.6 million study to catch gun thieves. If a small number of places are having a theft problem, it should be easy to watch those places. It is harder to hide a stolen gun that it is to hide marijuana, yet millions are spent enforcing marijuana laws. This is simply another case of existing laws not being enforced.

Locally we have a retired Air Force captain who had his gun thrown into a hedge by his live-in girl friend. The captain is being prosecuted for violating gun storage laws. Nothing is happening to the person who illegally took the gun and threw it into the hedge.

The media is deliberately missing a point about the Tucson shooting. Giffords and the mentally ill Loughner went to the same synagogue. A host of these shooters come from well-off families and are mentally ill. But the rich do not want to confine their mentally ill. They would rather confiscate the guns of the peasants.

Robert Underwood via Internet