Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
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March 9
The Commercial Dispatch on gun laws:
Mississippi may soon run out of new places to carry guns.
During its current session, the Mississippi Legislature is considering bills that would allow guns courthouses and churches.
The state had previously sanctioned concealed carry and enhanced concealed carry, which makes it legal to carry a gun pretty much anywhere except in prisons, jails, police stations and courtrooms. Today, it is not at all unusual to encounter guns on the hips of people in restaurants, stores, parks — pretty much anywhere people congregate.
In politically-conservative Mississippi, the wholesale dismantlement of restrictions on guns follows the NRA’s “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” mantra. The moves are also broadly viewed as a means of protecting the Second Amendment against those who would “take our guns.”
No matter the motives, Mississippians are buying guns at an unprecedented rate. In 2015, the FBI ran more than 252,000 background checks for gun purchases in the state — about 37,500 more than in 2014. Concealed carry permits in the state has almost doubled since in the last four years to more than 78,000. But what those who favor such legislation cannot say, based on any credible data, is that we are any safer as a result.
Data from the Center for Disease Control, in fact, show just the opposite. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, two states with the most restrictive gun laws, the gun homicide rate per 100,000 people is 3.4 and 4.9, respectively. Compare that to Mississippi, which has the fifth highest gun ownership rate (51 percent of Mississippians own firearms) and some of the least-restrictive gun laws in the nation. The gun homicide rate per 100,000 people in our state is 18.27, almost five times higher than Massachusetts.
If you want to ensure your chances against being a gun-violence victim, owning a gun does little, statistically-speaking, to improve your odds. Data shows the best way to avoid being a victim of gun violence is to not be black, poor or live in an urban area.
Black citizens are five times more likely to be a victim of gun homicides than whites. Meanwhile, whites are far more likely to die by gun suicide than blacks. Statistics show gun violence is also disproportionately higher in poor neighborhoods and in large cities.
Interestingly, black communities, which are statistically the most vulnerable to gun violence, are twice as likely to support stricter gun control than white communities, the studies show.
In a state where opinions on gun laws are passionately defended, the data seems to matter little.
For many, owning and carrying a gun creates an illusion of safety and dispels fears, not only of being a victim, but of having their rights taken away.
Yet for others, the ubiquitous presence of guns can be unnerving. How do we distinguish between a law-abiding citizen and a homicidal maniac? In an instant the former can become the latter, after all. In the old Westerns, it was easy to determine: The good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats.
We don’t have that sort of reassurance out here in the real world, of course.
The best we can hope for is that the guy with the gun on his hip at Walmart is a friend, not a foe.
Do we really want a society where everyone is armed?
Is this really a step forward in human relations? When you see a stranger with a gun, do you feel protected or vulnerable? Which sentiment is really the most rational?
It is, at least, a question we all should ponder. Is this really the direction we want to go?
Online:
https://www.cdispatch.com/
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March 8
The Greenwood Commonwealth on Mississippi’s immunization law:
One of the public policies that actually is working in Mississippi is in danger of being messed up by lawmakers who claim to be conservative.
The House recently voted 65 to 54, mostly along party lines with Republicans in the majority, to water down Mississippi law requiring children to be immunized against a number of communicable diseases before they can attend school.
Never mind that Mississippi’s strong immunization law has been held up as a model nationally or that California wrote one similar to it after a measles outbreak in that state.
Sixtyfive Mississippi state representatives bought in to impassioned testimony that “bureaucrats” were overriding family physicians.
The bill passed by the House - which the Senate should kill - would allow any physician anywhere in the nation to write an exemption to attend school without immunizations for a child the doctor examined. No disrespect to outofstate physicians, but you probably could find one somewhere to write an exemption for anything.
Lynn Evans, a former Jackson School Board member and a contributing columnist for The ClarionLedger, points out that Mississippi’s current law requires that only a Mississippi physician who regularly cares for the child may request an exemption from vaccination requirements for a medical reason. That request then goes to the state Health Department, so the department can verify the request and also record where nonimmunized children are in school in case of a disease outbreak. Evans wrote that last year 155 of 156 requests for medical exemptions were granted, and the one that was denied was because the application was incomplete.
It is true that there are valid medical reasons, such as allergies, for a few children not to get certain immunizations, but that protection is embodied in the present law.
Immunizations and public health policies in this country have all but wiped out what used to be serious - sometimes deadly - diseases such as polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox. They can reappear, though, as the measles outbreak at Disneyland did about a year ago when immunizations become lax. Some in the medical community are worrying now about recent cases of whooping cough, diphtheria and mumps.
School classrooms are a perfect breeding ground for communicable diseases, and it is dangerous to lower the bar on immunizations that keep diseases from spreading among a highrisk part of the population.
When a perfectly healthy child is not immunized, it not only puts that child at risk but other children who may not be able to be immunized for bona fide medical reasons. Parents might want to take chances with their own child, but they shouldn’t be allowed to take them with someone else’s.
Online:
https://www.gwcommonwealth.com/
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March 6
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on the Elvis Presley birthplace neighborhood in Tupelo:
Tupelo’s intentional development of the Elvis Presley birthplace neighborhood as a serious tourism attraction took a long time, but the foundation that runs the birthplace site with a museum, chapel, reception rooms, catering kitchen and other amenities has made great strides in raising its tourist visibility.
Two phases of expansion, construction and improvements have provided a measure of glitz and glamour befitting the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Tupelo’s most famous native son.
Phase 3, under development now, will add even more amenities to enhance the aura, history and identity of the world-renowned entertainer born and reared until early adolescence in East Tupelo.
Statues of a young Elvis and a story wall came with Phase II, which will consist of draining an existing lake on the property, landscaping the refurbished lake and eventually making it a fishing spot for children.
A picnic pavilion also will be erected and access ramps constructed.
A waterfall will add atmosphere and fountains will pour water into the lake. New walking paths and trails will add accessibility for all visitors.
The state has provided $1 million for Phase III. Reps. Steve Holland and Randy Boyd helped secure approval for the funds.
More attractions at the birthplace, explained executive director Dick Guyton, powers a magnet holding people in Tupelo longer to eat meals, buy tickets, purchase souvenirs and visit nearby retail shopping attractions, including Tupelo Hardware in the downtown area, the store where Elvis bought his first guitar.
Guyton, a veteran in his position, said enhanced attractions also bring more motor coaches, the big buses that carry about 45 passengers on their multi-day excursions to places like Tupelo and the birthplace. Each coach, he said, generates about $600 in ticket sales, plus $1,500 in gift sales.
Guyton said fans often time visits every five years to coincide with important anniversaries of the singer’s birth and death.
Although visitors started trekking to the birthplace house soon after Presley rose to fame and increased after his death, the enhancement of the whole property has made a trickle into a steady flow.
The birthplace lacks the physical stature of Graceland, Presley’s home in south Memphis, but nothing matches the birthplace and the neighborhood where Presley enjoyed friends, family and church.
Other influences on Elvis include black bluesmen in the neighborhood and country music radio programs enjoyed by his family.
Elvis’ parents of 1946 purchasing his first guitar that set Presley down the path to change American culture forever.
Late 1948 Elvis and his parents packed their belongings in a trunk strapped to the roof of their 1939 Plymouth and moved to Memphis in search of a better life.
The rest of the story unfolded from the mid-1950s until Presley’s untimely death in 1977.
The birthplace captures those vital formative years and experiences.
Online:
https://djournal.com/
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