Liberals trying to create
‘fix’ from wrong viewpoint
The Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights is under assault. Make no mistake about it. The Constitution says in part “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Furthermore, the Supreme Court has judged this right to be an “individual” right.
But, the big government leftists don’t care about the Constitution. They just want the guns taken from millions of law-abiding citizens. The gun control crowd is just using this awful, traumatic Florida school shooting as a pretext. And how are they making this effort? To begin with, leftists from all over the country organized frightened students and activists from the Parkland High School to march on the Florida Legislature. From there, it has morphed into leftist political leaders organizing student groups from locations such as Baltimore to march on Washington, D.C., and intimidate the Congress. The students clearly don’t understand the complexity of the public policies involved here. But, the protest organizers are counting on this ignorance and are using it to their advantage. All this activity is being funded by the Hollywood crowd and others with deep pockets who hate gun owners.
By demonizing guns and the NRA, the gun confiscation crowd is trying to distract us from the real causes of that terrible school shooting. The undeniable fact is that government at all levels failed to protect the children. This failure puts the lie to the leftist’s fundamental position that taking away guns will be OK because we have government to protect us.
What were the government failures? The shooter was mentally ill. His school mates knew it. The school administrators knew it. And the local police knew it — they had been called to his home many times. He did things for which he could have been prosecuted, but was not. The FBI had been tipped that he had posted that he wanted to be a school shooter, but they, too, did nothing. So, he never ended up in the Background Check System as a mentally unfit, prohibited person. Ultimately, he bought a gun and the rest is history. And don’t forget, the armed police officer in the school chose not to confront him. And, first responders stood outside rather than attack him.
So, what to fix? First, stop the political posturing and demagoguery. Then, identify and fix the government breakdowns. Give authorities the legal tools to deal with potentially mentally ill people and their guns — while protecting due process. Find the breakdowns in the reporting of prohibited persons to the National Background Check System. Hire and properly train competent, motivated law enforcement people. Strengthen school entry procedures and physical structures at all schools. These are the changes which will make a positive difference.
DENNIS PATRICK
Farmington
AR-15s are owned
for many purposes
James Gannon [Letters, March 4] states an AR-15 is only for mass murders. Americans own 10 million AR-15s for other purposes.
It’s like suggesting anyone who owns a chain saw must be headed toward becoming a chainsaw killer.
It’s not that they’re needed, but freedom allows us to get almost anything we want.
LENARD DEITERMAN
Springdale