How can America allow shootings to continue?

What in the world are we doing?

Another mass shooting and my own painful memories surface again. My son was killed in the 1990s. He was shot. A victim of violence.

I grieve my loss. The impact of losing my son to gun violence doesn’t lessen over time. It stays with me as a jagged rock I carry in my heart.

Town halls, movie theaters, elementary school classrooms, a midweek prayer meeting, a Sunday morning church service — a list of familiar places where we gather to learn, be entertained, find support, worship. The fact that common to all these is that they are sites of mass gun shootings is sickening.

The heart of America can’t continue to carry this many jagged rocks.

The fact that we have somehow managed to do so speaks to a government that is more worried about re-election than protection of its citizens and more founded on money and special interests than the needs of we the people.

The pattern of pray for the victims, express outrage and allow our media-saturated selves to be easily distracted until the next shooting — and there’s always a next shooting — must end.

We can end this. We must end this.

My opening question was one of pained exasperation. My closing question is one of needing to know: Who are we as Americans to allow this to continue? FRANK VENTROSCO North Side

We welcome your opinion

Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, it was stated that if angels governed men, we wouldn’t need to be protected from our government. Those men knew that power corrupts even the best intentions of mortal men. We are mostly in danger of being governed by tyrants, rather than by an individual who loses his sense of good, social conscience. NICK LIBERTO

Blawnox

There are now special backpack inserts available for schoolchildren in a district in Florida. Whereas the backpack you carried might have been special for bearing the image of your favorite cartoon character, rock band or teen heartthrob, these inserts make backpacks special in a notso-special way.

In an epically awful sign of our times, the backpack inserts are bulletproof.

But buying them for your children wouldn’t be the worst of it. The worst part would be explaining why they need one, as they go to a place that holds the key to expanding their knowledge and planting the seeds for their dreams and their future.

A magical place where, except for an occasional spitball or errant paper airplane, we never had to watch our backs. VIN MORABITO

Irwin

Thanks for the informative and exciting review of “Worlds Within” at Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery (”New Exhibition at CMU Examines the Hidden Life of Plants,” Nov. 1). I recently toured the show at the Miller with the new director, Elizabeth Chodos. I loved this fascinating and outrageously gorgeous show.

Ms. Chodos, new to Pittsburgh, is a strong addition to Pittsburgh’s art scene and its changing leadership. I hope the PG will have the opportunity to interview her regarding her role of leadership in Pittsburgh’s art scene.

I am always grateful for the PG’s arts and cultural reporting and for stories that support and increase the remarkable strength of Pittsburgh’s arts community. MARY KAY POPPENBERG

Aleppo