By failing to act, we are complicit in violence
Again we’ve been forced to witness preventable mindless violence. A lone gunman murdered 59 people in Las Vegas, but there were many fingers on the trigger.
We’re kidding ourselves if we believe the latest shooting tragedy is just a phenomenon, a fluke in an otherwise peaceful system. The tragedy in Las Vegas was the 273rd mass shooting this year, and contributed to the 11,000 deaths from gun-related violence in 2017 alone.
Mass shootings are preventable. Australia proved that reasonable legislation can effectively end mass shootings, as it accomplished in 1996. It has continued to prove it for years. But there is an assumption that any effort taken to end mass shootings will necessarily limit personal freedoms, such as the tradition of gun ownership. I challenge this argument and counter that by delaying the search for a reasonable solution to end mass gun violence, or by any unwillingness to compromise, we are setting the stage for the next bout of violence. By not preventing them, we have now become complicit in these attacks.
We have to admit that by our refusal to take action, by our sitting by and waiting for others to fix the problem, that we’re killing ourselves. We’re not just letting mass murders happen, we are enabling them. If there is ever a time to call your congressman, protest or write new legislation, it’s now. If not, we will be forced to normalize the fact that the next shooting isn’t a matter of if, but when. JOSEF BOOKERT
Garfield
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shopping malls, concerts, sporting events or other places that people gather.
Nor, it seems, can we outlaw semi-automatic weapons of war, which are made for the sole purpose of mass murder. You don’t hunt deer with semiautomatic weapons, which can be converted, as the Las Vegas shooter’s were, easily into fully automatic weapons. They are made solely for killing people on a mass scale.
So, it seems that these massacres will happen again, and again, and again, and again: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Orlando, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas. Again and again. The list will go on and on, with new names added to the list, year after year after year.
And we can only hope and trust that the guy next to us, or on a balcony above us, doesn’t have a gun and a grudge. ERIC LEIF DAVIN Bloomfield jump to conclusions, engage in intimidation, incite violence, suppress opposing views, loot and burn their own neighborhoods and disrespect the flag and our anthem, which represent our country. In fact, those who do these things hurt their own cause.
Professional athletes and entertainers have a marvelous platform and media coverage to effect positive change. Rather than sitting, kneeling or ignoring our anthem, they would accomplish much more by using their financial and other resources to create and organize programs to directly change the injustices they are protesting. They would be surprised at the support they would have for those programs. G.W. BUSH Moon
Since when did it become disrespectful to kneel? In almost any ceremony, and as recognized in the Christian faith, kneeling is a means of paying homage. Is it possible that those who knelt during the national anthem were trying to shed light on a troubling issue in an honorable way? It takes only a moment of rational thought to come to the conclusion that it likely was.
An effective tactic to conquer a nation is to divide it. The occupant of the White House divides us with his use of trumpery, defined in the dictionary as deception. This has divided our country as nothing could since the Civil War ( Vladimir Putin got his money’s worth).
The great divider’s campaign promise to unite has united the white supremacists among us. The unreported meaning of MAGA is actually Make America’s Genes Anglo.
So sad. TOM HARBAUGH South Park