The city would waste our taxpayer dollars focusing on something that will be nearly impossible to enforce (“Bill urges smoke-free cars,” Star-Advertiser, Oct. 12), and not doing what it should to address major issues such as getting homeless off the streets; getting mental help to those who need it; and speeding efforts to address infrastructure problems.

Yes, these are more difficult. Our criminals and mentally ill walk the streets because of our weak laws, and because we give them so many rights.

Should we not focus on the issues that affect the many, rather than a vice that affects the few? I’m not for smoking in vehicles or around children. I’m a non-smoker, but making a law that will be nearly impossible to enforce doesn’t seem like a good use of our taxpayer dollars or time.

Clifton T. Johnson

Waikiki

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Homeless need a safe place to stay

Again, the homeless are treated as pawns and moved without their own volition. Where are they to go? This has gone on for years and years.

Surely funds can be found by some agency to secure land to serve as a campground for the homeless. Children need square meals, a secure environment and, most important, the ability to go to school, as required by law.

Find the land, install safe and sanitary water and power lines, make rules for the campers, and police the heck out of the place. Send in social workers to start the processes of finding permanent housing.

Playing checkers with families is not ethical. I want to hold the City Council accountable.

In Singapore, I was told that the poor are “mandated to a home for the indigent,” where people must live if they can’t provide their own home. Surely we can humanely make a place for people, so that they don’t have to live on the street, and still not make it a jail.

Beverly Kai

Kakaako

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Learn from origins of 2nd Amendment

Discussions regarding the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are circular and endless. Perhaps, in the tradition of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, it would be appropriate to engage in originalism. What did the framers intend regarding the ownership of guns?

They wrote, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Did the new nation have a standing army? Or did it depend heavily on “a well regulated Militia” for its protection?

The term, “a well regulated Militia,” implies periodic assemblage and quasi-military training. It is reasonable to assume that the “arms” referred to were muzzle-loaded muskets in common use at that time.

If this analysis has any validity, how does one reconcile the events at Las Vegas, Sandy Hook Elementary School and Orlando, places that experienced mass slaughter on the oft-repeated premise that the Second Amendment provides an unalienable right to bear any kind of weapon?

Ed Sullam

Aina Haina

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Carrying guns won’t guarantee protection

Dawn Morais Webster’s excellent commentary places the issue of gun control precisely where it belongs — in the lap of our country’s leadership (“Gun control is a pro-life issue. Will bishops lead? Will legislators listen?” Star-Advertiser, Oct. 12).

That includes our manic president, our gutless members of Congress, our cowardly speaker of the House, our morally deficient state Republicans — and I dare say some Democratic politicians as well, and in particular our religious leaders.

Praying alone is not going to get the job done.

Neither is the National Rifle Association’s lunatic theory that only by more Americans arming themselves are we going to be safer.

A man or woman following this line of thinking may be walking around toting an automatic rifle in one hand, a second rifle strapped across their backs, handguns strapped to each hip, and yet it will take just one bullet to the back of the head for this walking arsenal to be brought down. That’s the reality of guns.

Carl Myatt

Hawaii Kai

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Kealoha not relevant in picking new chief

Former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha’s pending legal troubles surface again and again in the police chief selection process. That is an entirely separate issue. Move on.

In the past, there have been a plethora of qualified captains applying for the chief’s vacant position.

With the new “at-will” employment thrown into the equation, nary a one would dare risk their remaining careers, leaving those with nothing to lose applying for the position.

Whether you have four or even three commissioners, they’ll figure it out. What they don’t need is peripheral influences muddying the waters.

Rick Ornellas

Liliha

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Hawaii can’t count on Trump’s help

Must we suffer a fool?

What President Donald Trump has told the U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico, tells me that if Oahu were to suffer a Category 5 hurricane as Puerto Rico did, our residents, under Trump, would be in the same situation.

Most of Hawaii’s citizens are not white and the state is a consistent Democratic supporter. We are also, to quote Trump, “an island, surrounded by water, big water, ocean water.”

Hawaii is 2,500 miles away from California and depends on Matson and other carriers to provide 95 percent of our food and supplies.

Tossing paper towels to our citizens like a game-show carnival barker is not the answer for Puerto Rico or Hawaii.

Let’s hope we are never dependent on a president so appallingly lacking in human empathy.

Creighton W. Goldsmith

Nuuanu