Orlando shooting: If America doesn’t pass better gun control, it deserves Donald Trump

To the editor: Maybe America deserves Donald Trump as president after all. If we don’t have the decency to pass reasonable gun regulations after another mass shooting, then we deserve someone like Trump because we don’t have the courage, ethics or decency to demand that something be done.

The media and politicians wring their hands and talk a lot, and we put flowers and stuffed animals at the site of the killings and organize church vigils, but we do this over and over and we don’t vote in politicians who will stand up to the National Rifle Assn. and the gun industry and pass reasonable laws.

There isn’t any reason for citizens to own assault rifles. It doesn’t take military-style weapons with large magazines to hunt.

The other sad thing is that there are mass killings every day in America and we are getting more numb so when 50 people are killed, we just shrug our shoulders and go back talking about trivial things. America is sinking to Trump’s level because we are letting a small number of greedy people keep us from doing the right thing.

Steve Werner, Centennial, Colo.

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To the editor: Some commentary on the shooting has misdirected us when it comes to a potential solution to the national problem of mass shootings. In nearly every case the common thread was that the shooter was mentally ill and sadly identifiably so prior to the horrible incident.

Prior to the 1970s, we had many mental hospitals available to the mentally ill and their families to care for such people. That option is now lost for the most part, and as a consequence we have a long list of tragedies.

Instead of focusing on hate crimes, terrorism and gun control, perhaps focusing on the underlying mental healthcare may produce a solution.

Larry Rubenstein, Montrose

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To the editor: Once again we are “sending our hearts and prayers” when we ought to be sending our minds and our consciences. There are reasonable gun control measures that are favored by substantial majorities of even NRA members, but cowardly and/or financially dependent Congressmen not only refuse to act affirmatively but actively block attempts to enact the most modest of reforms.

We cannot always stop the madman from acting but we do not have to enable him, or enhance his abilities to kill by allowing semiautomatic weapons and outsized magazines. Congress must step up to its responsibilities.

Fredric Dunn, San Diego

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To the editor: In your editorial you say that “blood is on the hands of the National Rifle Assn. and its sycophants in Congress who have conspired to make this a more dangerous nation.”

Do you actually believe that if all of the legal guns in the U.S. are taken away that this kind of terrorism would stop? I would like to remind you of the war on drugs, which has accomplished nothing. It has not been able to stop the flow of illegal drugs from coming across our borders. Our borders are open to the flow of illegal contraband because of the demand.

The same kind of demand for illegal guns would provide a flow of guns across our borders into the hands of terrorists and criminals.

Robert Pecoraro, Prescott, Ariz.

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To the editor: Collateral damage. That’s what the nation is to the extremist Republicans in Congress who refuse to put people’s lives over the NRA’s campaign funding.

Each time the Republicans vote down a common-sense bill that might mitigate firearm deaths, always for dishonest reasons, they thumb their noses at the majority of the American people. We are held hostage in our own country by an unconscionable few, in the line of fire at any time or place by some crazy wielding an assault weapon.

We need to vote these people out and replace them with representatives of the people, not the NRA.

Wendy Blais, North Hills

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To the editor: As a medical student at UCLA, I stand for healing and caring, and it breaks my heart that under-regulated guns work against this by putting all of us in harm’s way.

This month I huddled on the UCLA campus on lockdown. This weekend we heard that the worst gun massacre in U.S. history has happened in Orlando, where so many people lost a child, a friend, a partner. Police in Santa Monica may have narrowly averted a similar tragedy at Sunday’s L.A. gay pride parade.

I encourage everyone to contact their representatives and ask them to support sensible gun legislation such as universal background checks and assault weapons bans and dedicate funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on gun violence.

Doing nothing in the face of this violence is a decision. Don’t let it be yours.

Katrina Koslov, Santa Monica

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