Speaker battle, school security, and hunting deer

Give credit on vote to GOP hard-liners

Is there one Democrat in the House who has the courage to stand up to Democratic leadership the way the 20 Republican hard-liners did to their leadership?

You can condemn them for doing what they did with the House speaker vote, but they apparently were doing it for what they believe is best for the country, not the party [“Fragile grip on power,” News, Jan. 8]. In the previous Congress, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had all the Democrats bulldozed.

— Bernard McGrath, Holbrook

“I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear,” Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) said in her “Declaration of Conscience” Senate speech in 1950.

Smith was a rational Republican who was not afraid to call out her colleagues who cowered before Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and his vicious smear tactics that characterized the Red Scare of that era. She had the courage to speak truth to power and remained a senator until 1973.

Seven decades later, the fragility of democracy remains apparent as another McCarthy, Kevin, and a band of dangerous Republicans now threaten to throw a monkey wrench into the House of Representatives.

History rhymes. How well its couplets and meters align with a previous era remains to be seen. Will courageous Republicans band together with Democrats to restore some semblance of order over the next two years?

If you feel uncertain or downright frightened, you are in good company.

— Nick Santora, Roslyn Heights

Now, Grandma must worry over the kids

I walked to school through the snow and rain. I was 6. I lived between Sunrise Highway and Merrick Road. There were no school buses in Lynbrook, and one crossing guard came later on. I walked to the farthest point north in my school district. Sometimes, there were other neighborhood children with me, but usually I was by myself. I wonder if my mother worried. Was my father thinking about me on his way into the city on the Long Island Rail Road?

I have 6-year-old grandchildren. They ride the bus as do my 7-, 8- and 10-year-olds. Now, bus or not, I worry about them [“Shooting by boy ‘intentional,’ ” Nation, Jan. 10]. They have lockdown drills in school. Will a shooter get in somehow? Will a 6-year-old have an “altercation” with his teacher and shoot her?

Will we ever have meaningful gun control? Probably not in my lifetime. It’s shameful.

— Susan Hennings Lowe, Huntington

Football still a danger to all its players

Although not a football fan myself, I was relieved to see that the Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin is recovering well from the serious blow to his chest “Hamlin returns home,” Sports, Jan. 10].

However, this does not indicate that football is a safe sport. In our relief over this improvement, let’s not miss the threats of the other, more significant dangers of football.

The overwhelming and tragic consequence of repeated hard impacts to the head, even while wearing a helmet, CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, remains. The effects aren’t noticed right away but eventually show up, sometimes years later, as serious, irreversible and debilitating brain damage. It’s always been this way, although we are only putting this all together in recent years.

Let’s not lose sight of this in our relief at Hamlin’s recovery. Football remains a dangerous game, putting the sanity and lives of its talented stars at risk every time they step onto the field.

— Lee Ann Silver, Shoreham

Compare statistics before hunting deer

The editorial promoting deer hunting over the humane method of birth control to reduce road accidents needs convincing statistics [“More hunting of deer is needed,” Opinion, Dec. 30]. What is needed are comparative numbers of injuries and deaths caused by DWI, reckless driving, the rate of human encroachment on wildlife territory and the percentage of failure of deer birth control measures. It is time for the governing bodies to consider the effect of hunting on the human mind amid the escalating violence on Long Island.

Medical measures are not carried out on humans without being experimented on thousands of animals. Bow-and-arrow hunting not only violently kills deer, it shows a lack of reverence for life.

As Pythagoras said, “For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

— Dr. Sharada Jayagopal,  East Williston