THE COMMUNITY VOICE:

Comments on the Proposed Rezoning of Front Street

I feel compelled to comment on the proposal by the City of Perth Amboy to re-zone Front Street, in order to “allow property owners to open small businesses such as shops, coffee houses, art galleries, and acoustic venues.”

I owned the Maid of Perth Antique Shop on Front Street during the 1990’s. Initially, it was a popular destination, and we sold local memorabilia, nautical antiques, vintage postage cards, and gifts. I also served as President of the Perth Amboy Chamber of Commerce and was on the Board of the Perth Amboy UEZ for several years.

The historic ferry slip on Front Street has been restored, as a Maritime Museum with Visitors’ Center, and we had a Fishing Party Boat docked at the Marina which offered daily trips and Sunset Cruises.

However, my Antique Shop could not continue to “stay afloat” after the Perth Amboy Chamber of Commerce was dissolved for reasons that I will never understand in a city the size of Perth Amboy, the Maritime Museum and Visitors’ Center is NEVER OPEN, and the Fishing Party Boar is no longer docked here.

There are no valid reasons for additional businesses on Front Street. We presently have two fine dining restaurants, a Bait and Tackle Shop, Ice Cream parlor, and Food Truck at the Marina. Parking and traffic are at capacity.

We need to do more to support the businesses on Smith Street. People from out of town are reluctant to drive through the business district. We do not need empty storefronts, neon lights on the signage, mattresses propped up against the stores, or people selling items from card tables set up on the sidewalk. We have to strictly discourage jay walking and vehicles being double parked. And we desperately need the train station upgraded so that we have an elevator to take us down to the boarding area instead of having to descend 26 steps.

Let’s face the facts. We cannot hope to compare ourselves to “Asbury Park” as long as we have to shutter our businesses at night with metal gates. Please go back to the drawing board and remove Front Street from this pipe dream proposal and focus on making Perth Amboy’s Business District GREAT AGAIN!!

Sincerely,

Barbara J. Booz

PS: The Maid of Perth Antiques is NOW LOCATED in Allenhurst, NJ and there is a second location in Asbury Park!

Was it Political or Not?

As we know by now, there has been a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida by a person named Nikolas Cruz, age 19 using a AR-15 killing 17 people. This is what the mainstream media told us. To me, I think there’s more to this shooting then meets the eyes. Don’t ask me why. If you look into this and use your judgement on this shooting, you ask yourself a question. Was it political or not? It amazes me how these teens somehow started this mass protest overnight about gun control. Who or what political party is helping them? And how come these teens are not protesting about the war in Afghanistan where our troops are protecting the opium fields? You know about the heroin trade. Whatever happened to the peace movement like in the 1960’s?

Orlando “Wildman” Perez

Who Did You Say Had Blood on Their Hands?

I took offense at some of the statements made by the left after the recent murders at yet another school shooting, this time in Florida. The statement I was most offended by was that the “the Republicans and the NRA has blood on its hands”. I was offended by that statement because I’m a life member of the NRA.

I began to wonder why the supposedly intellectual elite of the left would even think of making such an offensive and false statement, after all the NRA is a civil rights organization, and have been around for a long time.

The NRA always promoted safe gun handling and respect for firearms. Shooting children does not constitute safe gun handling or respect for firearms, so that can’t be the reason.

The NRA sponsors the Eddie Eagle Program, a program designed to teach kids gun safety, proper handling, and respect for firearms, so it can’t be that.

The NRA also defends the right of the American people to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Bingo, that’s it, but why? Why would someone want to take away the Second Amendment? After all the founding fathers thought it important enough to make it the second amendment after the first one, guaranteeing freedom of speech.

They probably wrote the first one then thought, (how will we insure that this and all of the future amendments we write will not be taken away by tyrants like the ones we just fought a bloody war to break away from?), so they wrote the second amendment.

Some argue that the Second Amendment is antiquated or out dated. If that is so, then all the others are too. However, we all know how the radical left loves the First Amendment and use it like a scalpel in the hands of a blind surgeon.

Both sides can agree that we have a serious problem. When parents have to worry if their children are going to come home from school alive, that is definitely a serious problem. What the two sides do not agree on is how to fix it.

You cannot fix something if you do not know what’s broken, so let’s take a closer look.

What struck me as odd is that when I was of school age, (that would be between 1960 and 1972), school shootings were unheard of. They existed, but usually involved adults shooting other adults who happened to be in a school or a student who had a gripe with another student or teacher. Moreover, the press did not harp repeatedly about them, if they covered them at all.

We did not have the trauma of today’s youth. All we had were assassinations, riots, and an unpopular war. We even got to watch the murder of President Kennedy’s alleged assassin on live TV. But we didn’t have the stresses of today’s youth, Please…!

The ambiguous gun laws of today did not exist. Guns were much more accessible than they are today.

The term “assault rifle” was not heard of, although they did exist and were available to the civilian population in semi-automatic, even then civilians were not allowed to own fully automatic or machine guns. Then they were just rifles not “Assault Rifles”.

Some schools in NJ and other states had shooting teams that competed against each other just like football and baseball teams. Some kids even brought their rifles and ammunition with them on the school bus. No one gave it a second thought, because using them on their fellow classmates wasn’t thought of.

So, what changed? Why do some kids want to murder their fellow students in today’s day and age?

What has changed children’s minds and attitudes that move them to murder?

Take for instance the Columbine murders, (I refer to this tragic incident not because it was the first or worst, because it was neither, but because it seems to be the one most remembered and referred to).

Columbine led to many studies into the motives and reasons for this behavior. Things like bullying, music, video games, gun control, social climate, Goth culture, mental illness…, were studied by a multitude of experts with no conclusive results.

There were some that saw these two kids as modern day revolutionist radicals, but at the same time made sure to point out that they disagreed with their methods, (yea, if you believe that, I have a bridge for sale). In fact some kids see these two as heroes, think what they did was cool and want to emulate them. Now that is scary.

Some insist it was because they were bullied. We have always had bullies even back when I was a kid. They have existed since man first walked upright and as long as human beings remain human they will always exist, no matter how much you try to legislate it away. So that’s not it.

Is it because they were having a bad day? Well we’ve all had good days and bad days, it didn’t make us want to shoot kids. Nope, that’s not it.

It’s the availability of guns. Nope, covered that already, they were more readily available, (that means easier to get your hands on for those who have trouble understanding), so no, that’s not it, and stop deflecting to gun control. So, what’s happening?

One of the things studied, but adamantly dismissed by the left, is parenting. The left tries to point out that parenting has nothing to do with it and if nothing else the parents of the shooters are living with the guilt of their child’s deeds and are suffering just as badly as the parents of the murdered children are. Maybe so, but that guilt will not bring that murdered child back.

A good example is when one of the parents of the Columbine murderers found a homemade pipe bomb in his son’s closet. He reacted immediately by grounding him, taking his sons car away, taking away his computer privileges, and conducting surprise inspections of his room. A lot of good that did, the son and his friend just made the bombs in the garage while daddy was home working on his computer, (but at least his room was bomb free).

When I read that I imagined what my father would do if he found a bomb in my room: “That’s it son, this time you’ve really crossed the line. Your grounded, and I’m taking away your Etch A Sketch, (we didn’t have computers or video games), and tomorrow I’m making an appointment with Dr. Feelgood to get you some happy pills”. Yea, right!

Another example is an 18-year-old who was living in North Carolina with his parents and was obsessed with Columbine. The kid had a history of mental issues and even tried to commit suicide on the anniversary of the Columbine murders. He convinced his mother to drive him to Littleton so he could video tape the high school where the murders took place. Then he asked her to drive past the house where Eric Harris used to live, and she did. Before they left Colorado, he bought a black trench coat. Hello, mom! Knock-knock, anyone home? Apparently not. A few months later he shot and killed his father then went down to a local school and shot and wounded two students.

It seems whenever you mention parenting, parents jump on their high horses and take offense. Not my sweet child, we’re good parents. That may be, but are you involved with and pay attention to your offspring. And I don’t mean taking him/her to their soccer game and going to PTA meetings. Do you know who your child is talking to on their electronic device, more importantly, what are they talking about? That’s not to say that your child is a potential murderer, but studies have found that, in most of these murders, students knew in advance that something was odd about their fellow classmate, but either said nothing or thought nothing of it.

If you hear or see, for instance, the names Klebold or Harris or any other mass murderer come up in casual conversation between your child and his/her friends, it’s time to pay attention.

Then the excuse of privacy and giving your child space comes up. Well how much space and how much privacy? If eavesdropping on your child bothers you, get over it. It might save his/her life or the life of someone else’s child.

Then there are the parents who own firearms. Many of the school murderers were minors. How did these minors get their hands on a gun? They got it from their own homes or the home of a friend. Hey parents, WAKE UP, if you have firearms and children in your house your responsibility has just quadrupled. You do not put a loaded gun in a shoebox and keep it in the closet where you are sure your child will not get his hands on it. That’s just stupid and irresponsible.

If you want to teach your child about the safe handling of firearms and how to shoot, by all means, go right ahead. The time to teach them the proper and safe handling of firearms is when they are young. However, when the lesson is over lock up the gun so junior does not have access to it. Moreover, make sure that junior knows that the only time he/she is allowed to handle it is when you are with him/her. How to drive that point home is up to the individual parents but make sure the point is driven home.

There are people, powerful people, who want to see guns banned from this country period, which is their only agenda. They constantly use any excuse to bring up their anti-gun agenda, and care about nothing else. These people use skewed statistics and false statements to manipulate the left like a puppet master manipulates his puppets.

A perfect example of this was the alleged fact that there have been 18 school shootings so far this year leading some to believe that kids are being killed left and right. And the left goes; Waaaaa, we need gun control.

In actuality; nine of the incidents involved no deaths or injuries, 2 were suicides, (one of which occurred in the parking lot of a school that was abandoned), and 3 were unintentional discharges. There were three school shooting incidents which would be considered by most to be mass shootings, which is three too many. What we need is people control, but that would be offensive. That would violate people’s rights. It would be much better to violate the second amendment after all that does not violate people’s rights.

The anti-gunners harp about the accessibility of guns and things like magazine capacities, none of which would have prevented these tragedies They then politicize the “school shooting” to try to advance their agenda using the children, as if they cared about the children, all they care about is banning guns, so they can then advance their socialist agenda. These same people then have the audacity to claim that the Republicans and the NRA have blood on their hands and do not care about the children when the exact opposite is true.

No, it is the left who has blood on their hands for refusing to see or acknowledge all of the problems involved, parenting being the most important one. Instead they keep listening to their puppet masters and keep harping about the guns. Gun, guns, guns, is all they can talk about or care about. They are the ones who do not give a hoot about the children, just their anti-gun agenda.

The left seems to go by the old saying; the squeaky wheel gets the grease. What they don’t seem to realize is that the squeaky wheel also gets replaced over time.

Joe Bayona