The Uvalde tragedy where 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were killed by a deranged 18-year-old male using two Daniel assault rifles he purchased legally, and the 26 similar tragedies before including Sandy Hook Elementary School, call for urgently adopting gun safety laws.
To be blunt, politicians oppose gun control to kiss up to the NRA where they get much election campaign funding (that’s “blood money”) or because they fear it, acting against the public’s best interests. They need to find the courage to do what’s right, as Republicans did in 1994, and help ban the weapons that are killing more children in America than car accidents.
How is this problem solved? Certainly not by bringing more guns into it, which clearly adds fuel to the fire. And not with policies catering to the NRA (“hardening schools,” “arm law-abiding citizens”), or by inciting misinformation (“take guns away from my cold dead hands”). The proper solution should promote public safety and protect individual rights. Opposing sensible gun control laws is wrong, mistakenly claiming they do not work. For example, killings using assault weapons skyrocketed after the federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004. That ban should be reinstated. At the least, minimum age to legally purchase an assault weapon should be raised to 21 years, as is for handguns, and universal background checks required.
Raul Field Escandon
Houston
Support
by default
The assault weapon is now equated with mass shootings. Some lawmakers insist assault weapons are protected by the Second Amendment. Therefore, by default they support mass shootings.
Failure to regulate assault weapons keeps mass shootings alive. It is blaringly obvious that assault weapons are the primary instruments of mass shootings, so why aren’t they taken out of the equation?
By inaction, these legislators support mass shootings.
People will continue to elect lawmakers who support the Second Amendment not realizing they are by default supporting mass shootings. By electing Second Amendment candidates (by default mass shooting candidates), you play a role in supporting mass shooting.
Candidates don’t just come out and say they are for mass shootings, but their actions and defense of the Second Amendment in mass shootings tell you they support mass shootings consciously or unconsciously.
Now, when I hear a candidate supporting the Second Amendment I understand they are supporting the shooting of innocent men, women and children unless by their actions they indicate otherwise.
Are you supporting mass shootings by keeping these legislators in office?
Richard T. Grant
Brownsville
Creating
a burden
Mrs. Imelda Coronado states that we the people of Texas should not educate immigrants.
The problem with this closed-minded way of thinking is what happens when these children eventually become legal citizens. What she proposing is that when these children grow, we have uneducated people who have to rely on government help all their lives instead of being educated so they can have a chance in life so they won’t become a burden on the taxpayers.
I used to think this many years ago. But I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of illegals in time and I have to say that they are very hard-working people.
Believe me, Mrs. Coronado, the majority of them didn’t come here to commit any crimes.
Jesus Rodriguez
Elsa
