Start with behavior

First, let me thank you for continuing to put the printed version of your newspaper on the rack.

Lives have been lost once again by the bad behavior of a few, and we immediately want to rewrite laws to restrict the law-abiding citizens. Always, the subject is guns, and second to that is mental health. No matter how you rewrite it, there is no way to predict which person suffering from mental illness will actually turn into an active killer. Even with today’s supposed criteria, it is a dangerous thing to our individual freedoms to start trying to define someone’s mental health as stable or not.

Instead, maybe we should be asking ourselves and our educational system if we have in place and in play the standards to be raising good, responsible, respectful citizens. Yes, it starts at home, but at this point that’s been lost due to numerous influences. Now more than ever there must be a standard of moral behavior set in the public school system. To have self-discipline, one must be disciplined. Until we actively affirm good behavior and punish bad behavior, this will not change.

Our populace has multiplied, our influences have multiplied, our visibility has been multiplied ad nauseam.

If I could change one thing in the current situation, it would be that the media could only report on it for one day—the day of. After that, they should talk about the victims and the punishment of the perpetrators.

Finally, evil exists. Let’s teach goodness and godliness. That any place in this country would allow satanists to erect a monument is insanity.

PAM MONTGOMERY

Conway