Prevent the spread of hatred
Gun control
Regarding “A bloody normal,” (A14, March 24): There have been seven mass shootings in seven days. Of the 19,141 homicides that occur annually, 75 percent involve firearms, per the CDC. I am grateful for the important discussions taking place surrounding gun laws.
Equally alarming, the FBI reported over 7,000 hate crimes in 2019. I must highlight our timely opportunity to transcend the divisive language and polarity of today’s politics and expand the conversation. By moving the conversation upstream and focusing on social determinants of health, we can address the shared causal factors of mass shootings, hate crimes and many other issues. Through intentional and collective action, we can educate and empower one another to engage in decent discourse and model respectful behavior. We can advocate to improve the well-being of our entire community.
We must go as far upstream as possible and address determinants of health like hatred, a destructive and seductive force that is the biggest existential threat to mankind. Its feedback loop destroys the lives of neighbors, friends and family. Whether on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, Black History Month in February or the Atlanta shooting this month, our narrative — both past and present — is ridden with suffering and death due to hate. If public health truly is the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities, then there is an immediate need and opportunity to acknowledge hatred’s dangerous role and take collective action to prevent its reappearance.
Together, we can cure and prevent the spread of the illness of hatred.
Joshua Yudkin, Houston
Just because Sen. Ted Cruz doesn’t agree, it is not “ridiculous theater,” as he describes it, that the majority of the public favors gun control legislation and wants Congress to act on this critical issue. Where’s the “well-regulated militia” part of the Second Amendment, emphasis on regulated? There is no
legitimate reason for an individual citizen to own a military-style assault weapon. None.
Cruz deliberately misrepresents the real issue when he falsely claims that the Democrats want to take away all guns. Private ownership of machine guns has been outlawed for decades. We had an assault weapons ban in place for years before it recently expired, and there was no discussion of taking away all guns. This is a false, alarmist argument, a strawman, created to thwart the will of the majority who want to be able to go to the grocery store without fearing a madman with an automatic weapon will mow them down in the bread aisle. Stephen Powe, Spring