Bad gun owners give the good guys a bad name

Some of my fellow gun owners need to understand that not everyone digs our rights and interests. So, we need to represent the Second Amendment with the utmost respect at all times and ensure that others are doing the same or, one day, we might no longer enjoy those freedoms. 

I was reminded of this last week when I saw two things that left me shaking my head in disgust.

First, on one of my commutes, I saw something that I had a few times before that I’m sure you are familiar with, too: the vinyl stickers on vehicles’ back windows that say “(f-word expletive) Cuomo” with what are, in the common vernacular, assault rifles in place of the letters F and K.

The stickers play perfectly to the tropes of the far left -- that gun owners are akin to savages.

Not only are those labels using language you wouldn’t use in front of a child or in public – I hope – they also use imagery of much-maligned AR15s that feed the negative assault rifle narrative and, at the same time, encourage aggression towards the state’s chief executive.

If you don’t agree with him on the issues, fine. I don’t either. That’s been well-documented in this column. But, if you’re going to make a case against the SAFE Act, red flag bills, gun raffle legislation, and more you need to be reasonable about it. Don’t foment hate and violence by association or advance misguided stereotypes.

If you want to win someone to our side and hopefully enlighten them on gun ownership and what it means for putting food on the table and/or protecting family and friends, then do so in a reasonable fashion that shows the virtues and values to the uninitiated.

“F Cuomo” stickers serve only to drive away those in the middle who are unsure of the Second Amendment while making sure the hardcore anti-gunners keep their distance from looking for even some common ground.

The labels do nothing to advance our cause and neither does what I saw while hiking the Feeder Road trail in the Iroquois Wildlife Refuge.

Far back on the trail, overlooking one of the large pools, was a handful of empty beer cans right next to spent shotgun shells. Based on the location and the type of shell they were left by waterfowl hunters.

Drinking while using firearms is stupid.

Polluting while enjoying the outdoors is stupid.

If I think those behaviors are stupid, imagine how stupid an anti-hunter perceives them. Likely, with the swamps being a haven for birdwatchers, there are many such people who walked that trail and saw the mess. It’s bad enough to them that someone is harvesting wildlife, but they’re also doing so unsafely and dirtily.

Those hunters didn’t win any brownie points with those already possessing negative notions about animal harvest.  

That shouldn’t be overlooked by other hunters. Repeat offenses can create a large enough cry that certain trails and bodies of water on those public lands could see hunting prohibited. No matter the finer nuances of hunting and the nutrition it provides, it’s hard to win over people who’ve been grossly offended by bad actors.   

Those who do own guns and those who hunt know that Bumper Sticker Guy and the Drinking Duck Hunter are very small minorities of the brotherhood and sisterhood of firearms users. The anti-gun and anti-hunt folks should understand that, too.

The vast majority of gun owners and hunters maintain and use their equipment safely and with respect and harvest wild game with care. We’re everywhere, too – close to 15 percent of Niagara County residents are registered handgun owners and many more own rifles and shotguns. Literally tens of thousands of us within the county are armed and in many ways. We aren’t practicing boorish behavior -- we’re behaving so well that we haven’t offended others with our guns and many don’t even know we have firearms. We are the rule, not the exception to it.

My challenge to gun owners is simple. If you associate with or know someone with an “F Cuomo” label, encourage him to take it off immediately. If you are Facebook friends with alleged Second Amendment advocates who share equally ugly memes online, stop them. If you know of unsafe hunters, reform them immediately or call a game warden.

Left unchecked these people are our own worst enemies. They claim to care about gun ownership yet do just about everything in their power to get others to not care for it. Aiding in the promotion of negative stereotypes feeds the other side and the rules they want imposed.

We gun owners are unique in that we represent our passions and rights 24/7. What we do or don’t do can have long-lasting effects on communities and the environment. That said, we must treat all that we do and all whom we interact with on the Second Amendment with class and dignity. If we don’t and allow a few bad seeds to make the good guys look rotten then we will see our rights continually eroded, something we know too well in the Empire State.

From the 15 April 2019 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News    

Getting paid to vote: Fighting bad citizenship with even worse citizenship

With the moniker of “Empire State” New York should be a leader.

We’re definitely not when it comes to voter participation.

Looking only at the gubernatorial elections since the mid-1970s, citizen engagement been in seriously steep decline. In the 1974 election, 75 percent of eligible New York voters went to the polls. By 1986, that number dropped to 55 percent. It lingered around 40 percent during the 2002, 2006, and 2010 campaigns before hitting rock bottom in 2014 with less than a third of all New Yorkers taking part.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s bad citizenship.

This year, turning that around became a serious goal of Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature.

To encourage greater participation they passed some excellent legislation, including excuse-free absentee voting and early voting, both of which this writer supported in a column earlier this year.

They’ve also passed some horrible standards, including a real gem that was hidden in the bowels of last week’s state budget which saw a transformation of the language of Section 1, Section 3-110 of state election law.

In the original version employers did not have to allow employees time off to vote if the polls were available 4 consecutive hours either before or after the shift. It was a common sense standard that protected the voting rights of workers who might have incredibly long shifts (like doctors, nurses and farm workers) and it encouraged workers on standard part- and full-time shifts to vote on their own time, as they would with any activity related to their personal liberty.   

Last week’s change saw that 4-hour standard scrapped entirely.

Now, even if an employee has a quartet of hours or more to vote outside of work, the employer is required to grant that person up to 3 hours of leave during working hours, either at the beginning or end of the shift, to go to the polls as long as that individual requests it no less than two days before Election Day. He doesn’t have to show he has or doesn’t have plenty of time outside of work. Employers have to honor every request, no questions asked before or after: There is nothing in the bill that requires the employee to present proof of their having voted nor has the state put a mechanism in place for polling stations to produce that for voters.   

It doesn’t end there.

The employer is also required to pay that person full wages for the time off that is “needed” for them to vote. So, even if the employee has all the time in the world to vote off the clock, they don’t have to and can get paid for it.

This standard applies to not only what many people believe to be “the” Election Day in November, but it also holds true for any election – village elections in March, presidential nominating primaries in April, school board elections in May, and primaries in June.

Employers can’t shirk or hide their duty, either, as they have to post in a conspicuous location their statement or policy reinforcing the state’s law no less than 10 working days before the election where it will remain until polls close.  

While this is, allegedly, a step the state is taking to inspire good citizenship, it does nothing but inspire bad citizenship.

Voter participation is low and has been low for a reason. A lot of people just don’t care. If during one’s ample personal time -- which for most workers is two-thirds or more of an entire day – he couldn’t find or make the time to vote, then he really doesn’t care enough about the direction of his community, school, state, or nation. He’s either complacent or he was never properly educated on his civic duties by his parents or schools.  

But, if now, if all sorts of voters like him come out of the woodwork to vote because it’s time away from work and 3 hours of free pay, there is nothing good that can come out of it. They won’t be voting for love of country, they’ll be voting for love of money and, at the same time, sticking it to their bosses and coworkers.  

That’s not the sort of person we want or deserve at the polls. Some races are so tight just a few votes can make a difference. Do we really want completely disinterested and ignorant people choosing our mayors, council members, and senators just so they can get participation points and nearly a half day of pay?

No.

Our republic wasn’t made by that. It was made by people who actually cared about it.     

Sure, everyone has a right to vote – and deserves that right -- but the magic of America is that it’s not a requirement to vote. If someone cares enough, if someone researches the issues enough, they will go to the polls. They don’t need to be incentivized to vote….nor should they be.

From the 08 April 2019 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News

Western New York’s dying forests

Older readers of this column will remember the once abundant American chestnut.

This magnificent tree dominated the Eastern landscape with quick-growing specimens that routinely reached heights of 100 feet. By the mid-1950s, chestnuts were a thing of the past. More than 3 billion of the trees (25 percent of the Appalachian forest) had succumbed to a blight inadvertently brought to North America from Asia.

Now, true American chestnuts are extremely rare -- only a select few with hardy genes can be found in areas off the beaten path. Those beleaguered trees almost never reach 50 feet in height and are always short-lived.

 
Similarly, baby boomers and some of their very oldest offspring will remember how the impressive American elm used to dot the countryside and line city streets. It was a long-lived tree with thick trunks and wide canopies.

Following the demise of the chestnut it, too, faced an invasive attack.

Dutch elm disease -- a fungal infection spread by an Asian beetle -- ravaged the elms over the second half of the twentieth century. It came close to but didn’t fully wipe out the elms, but it left behind a significantly-smaller population that could reach only a fraction of the age and size that they once did. For all intents and purposes, the elm is basically dead as we knew it.

A lot of folks look back with fondness on chestnuts and elms. Whether someone farmed or hunted alongside these once-great trees or as a child spent many a summer hour climbing or swinging from one of them, they gave us many great memories and also some great economic benefit: The chestnut was one of the best hardwoods for furniture and home construction and the wood of the elm had fantastic strength.

The devastation of our forests at the hands of foreign invaders is never-ending. It seems that once one species of tree sees its demise another begins to face its greatest threat. Now is no different. Two types of trees which are very abundant on the Niagara Frontier will be gone very soon – ashes and beeches.

Just 10 years ago, the ash was unmolested in our area. But, a lot can happen over a decade.

In 2009, the emerald ash borer was discovered in the southwest corner of the state after it had quickly made a destructive path from the upper-Midwest where it had already destroyed 40 million trees in short order: The Asian pest first appeared in the US in 2002.

These beetles bore through the inner bark of ashes, essentially girdling and ultimately killing the trees. Nearly 8 billion ash trees are at risk of extermination and we’re seeing it locally: After the woodlots of Niagara and Orleans County leaf out in the next two months, notice all of the skeletonized, leafless trees standing among them. It’s a frightening swath of arboreal death.

Not only will this have a detrimental impact on our environment, but it will also harm our economy: $25 billion of ash had been harvested annually in the United States before the beetles staked their claims. There is no known way to control the borer. Its eastward movement can only be slowed down by firewood and timber quarantines, which, sadly, did not work at all in WNY. It’s pretty much guaranteed that the beetles will demolish our forests.

Another pestilence that’s well under way is that faced by our beeches.

Everyone is familiar with these trees, they of the smooth grey/silver bark that is a perfect target for carvings of initials and love. They have fallen victim to beech bark disease, a two-stage ailment where a small insect known as a scale infiltrates the bark and is then followed by a deadly fungus. The bark cracks and falls off and then the malnourished tree topples over.

This disease has really put a stranglehold on the area since the turn of this century. Take a look at any forest or town park in the region. Most every adult beech tree has passed or is showing symptoms of infection. It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago they were healthy and vibrant. This will adversely impact the mammals and birds that feasted on the beech nuts. Mother nature can’t replace that mast crop.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to save the ashes and beeches. They will go the way of the chestnuts and elms.

In the meantime, get out in the woods and appreciate their beauty while you can. Take some pictures or harvest the timber before it’s too late to do either. The trees are dying and they will become memories of the past, further changing the look, economic viability and natural balance of the Niagara Frontier.

From the 01 April 2019 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News