Reducing gun suicides, our housing shortage and more: Letters

NH has a chance to reduce gun suicides

Feb. 12 −To the Editor:

It is a fallacy to claim that the best protection from gun violence is “good people with guns”. The fact is, good people with guns often kill themselves.  Gun suicides are on the rise, according to the CDC, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions reports nearly 27,000 suicides by firearm in 2022 alone.  According to Everytown for Gun Safety, suicides without a firearm are only 4% successful, while suicides by firearm are 90% successful.  Gun suicides eliminate the hope of a “second chance” by providing a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  A report in Preventive Medicine noted firearms suicides are higher in areas where it is easier to purchase a gun and lower where it is more difficult. 

Let’s support SB571-FN, expanding the background check prior to all commercial firearm sales, SB 577 requiring a 3-day waiting period before taking delivery of a gun, and the proposed red flag law (SB360-FN).  These bills will be before the NH Senate on February 15th.  Give life a chance.  

Lorraine Hansen

Rollinsford

We need to have an honest conversation about housing

Feb. 12 − To the Editor:

The nation is facing a housing crisis, we are more than a million homes short of the need.

We need housing. How we fix this crisis is the question. 

New Hampshire has seen an influx of people moving here especially in the last 15-20 years, selling their homes in higher priced markets, purchasing here at lower cost, they demo an existing house to build a larger home. This influx is what is driving the demand on real estate, the need for more workers, and we need housing for these people. This raises property prices, increasing property tax, forcing many older residents to move. 

Many states are debating ending single-family zoning that have defined the iconic ‘American Dream’. The goal is to create housing people can afford, lessening negative impacts that are associated with single family homes. 

New laws are needed to legalize kinds of housing banned for generations, duplexes, townhomes, smaller apartment buildings. It's called the "missing middle" and is meant to fill the gap between single-family homes and high-rise apartments. 

According to the 2023 New Hampshire Statewide Housing Needs Assessment, NH falls short of needs by an estimated 23,500 units. By 2040, NH will need 90,000 units to meet state demand. 

We need to start to have an honest discussion about how our community is going to address these challenges. 

Gary Cameron

Portsmouth

America’s unresolved race problem

Feb. 13 − To the Editor:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” Our nation was founded on that phrase. However, the men who wrote it owned slaves.

The American Civil War was fought over slavery and resulted in about 750,000 dead. The slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Freed slaves were able to make some progress during Reconstruction. 20 years later, Reconstruction ended and the former confederates resumed running the South. Slaves were free but barely existed as sharecroppers. The Jim Crow Laws and frequent lynchings eliminated any thought of freedom.

White America was able to retain its standard of superiority. Any white person, regardless of income or social standing was assured of superiority to any Black. This remained the norm not just in the South but everywhere in the United States. America was the land of the free but only for the whites. Even in the military, Blacks fought bravely but were never recognized for their accomplishments or allowed to become officers. When they returned home, they were beaten for wearing their uniforms and being “uppity”. No matter how poor a white person became, his superiority was guaranteed by his white skin.

One hundred years after the Emancipation, Civil Rights Legislation changed all that. Black people who were assumed to be inferior could rise to important positions and wealth. A few Black people could now afford better housing, entered the professions and even became President. Those Blacks who failed to advance were demonized by popular culture and were assumed to be criminals and lazy welfare cheats. Black people still receive more severe treatment by the police and the judicial system. All this to retain the illusion of white supremacy.

Since 1970 wages remained stagnant as union membership decreased. Those in the dominant caste felt a threat to their position every time a Black person rose above them. Whites became insecure about their very existence.

The free flow of immigrants built this nation. Now it is portrayed as a threat. The speeches by the son of a multi-millionaire resonated with uneducated whites as he preached the evils of immigration. He tells them that immigrants are murderers and rapists and are poisoning American blood. The message of Making America Great Again was just what the downtrodden whites needed to hear. This message is enhanced by the propaganda on Fox News. Even though it is obviously lies, whites desperately take to Donald Trump as their savior.

Now Trump is promising civil conflict. His message works because the caste system in America is so ingrained into our society that instead of being the foundation of social order it has become a threat to its undoing.

Bill Kingston

New Castle

NH school vouchers are now welfare for high income families 

Feb. 12 − To The Editor: 

The NH GOP majority state house just voted to write $20,000 yearly vouchers payable from your property taxes year after year to families earning $156,000 annually. The $20,000 per family with four school aged children will be spent with few questions asked if they have been sending their children to private, religious or home schools. 

This fiscally irresponsible bill was pushed through by the GOP members of the house educational committee, including Rockingham Reps. Arlene Quaratiello and Oliver Ford.

Normally, a bill that will cost taxpayers millions of dollars goes to the finance committee to be vetted. The GOP house majority intentionally bypassed that route. The bill has few guardrails to protect how these families receiving $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 property tax funded vouchers will be used. 

Homeschoolers can spend the approximately $5,000 per child almost any way they want and claim it was an educational experience, including taking their kids on vacation.  

The website Traveling Homeschoolers has a wait list for its Paris to Normandy River Cruise, with similar Rhine and Danube cruises as well as trips to Universal Studios. There are a thousand other ways families can game this new state sponsored welfare-to-high-income-families bill. 

Independents, Republicans and Democrats must demand that this financial malfeasance stop now. The state house Republicans voted to give away your money. The Republican dominated state senate will probably do the same, unless all of us, starting today, call Senate Majority leader Jeb Bradley’s office at (603) 271-3479 and Gov. Chris Sununu’s at (603) 271-2121 and demand they stop giving away $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 and $20,000 year after year to individual families with little oversight on how it is used. 

Leonard Witt 

Sandwich