School safety: No guns

Andy Dubois (“Lake sheriff has right idea for safe schools”) writes that he supports the suggestion of Lake County Sheriff Peyton Grinnell that one way in which to make our schools safer is to install the STAR program (School Threat Authorized Responder.) This program would allow certain trained school personnel to be armed on some campuses. This suggestion ignores the fact that so many school personnel across the nation oppose such a plan.

What Dubois’ and Grinnell ignore most of all is that the best solution to stop these mass murders is to remove military-style semiautomatic weapons from the marketplace.

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made it abundantly clear that the Second Amendment does not give one the right to possess or own such a weapon. In fact, shotgun pistols and sawed-off shotguns are illegal. Why, then, not military-style semiautomatic weapons and bump stocks?

To answer Dubois’ question (Is it not time to defend ourselves?), the answer is a resounding yes, and this is best done by removing these massmurder machines from our society. No one wants to violate your Second Amendment rights, Mr. Dubois, contrary to what the NRA claims. The NRA is in the business of helping gun manufacturers sell guns and not representing gun owners and gun ownership. After each mass murder, gun sales go up. Richard Sutherland Winter Haven