School Shooting, Gun Control
* Re the Littleton, Colo., high school shootings: How many of our children must be shot and killed before we decide that guns must be gotten rid of? Is it two students, 10 students, 15--or will it take a hundred?
What will it take to break through our wall of massive denial about the causes of gun violence? Every country has disturbed children--but ours is one of the few that allows virtually everyone to have access to guns. Why do we need an army and navy when we are at far greater danger from our own citizens than from any foreign power?
SHEILA ANDERSON
Oak View
* The Colorado state death penalty law teaches its citizens that killing someone is an appropriate way to solve a problem. The two students from Littleton learned this lesson well.
FATHER GEORGE HORAN
Office of Detention Ministry
Los Angeles
* How ironic that President Clinton has called for Americans to teach their children to resolve their differences through the use of words, not weapons, while at the same time we are dropping bombs on Kosovo.
DIANE PARGAMENT
Canoga Park
* My immediate and continuing reaction is that Charlton Heston and his fellow NRA officers have a great deal of blood on their hands. No other nation has experienced anything like the last 18 months of gun violence in our schools. The one overriding factor that sets America apart from the civilized world is our complete lack of any meaningful controls on guns. More than any other individuals, the National Rifle Assn. and the politicians it owns are guilty of this horror. Each of them, if they had a shred of human honor, would personally apologize to the parents and families of Littleton.
DEAN HISER
Orange
* While the shooting at the Littleton school is a tragedy we would not wish on anyone, there is an important lesson to be learned from it. Gun-free school zones and other gun control laws which are largely ignored by criminals provide only the illusion of safety, not real safety. In communities and states allowing law-abiding, sane adults to carry a gun for self-defense, the criminals are never sure if they will get away with such abhorrent behavior without risking their own lives.
While some administrators, teachers and parents may cringe at the thought of adults carrying a firearm at school, the alternative we witnessed Tuesday is infinitely worse. It’s time for the Handgun Control Inc. crowd to start recognizing the substantive, proven, common-sense solutions to the problem of violence in our society instead of feeding us feel-good legislation that only increases the likelihood that our neighbors and children will be helpless victims of violent crime.
PAUL VALLANDIGHAM
Orange
* If I were the parent of one of the students killed in Littleton, I would have the following question:
How is it that only two high school students, no matter how well armed, can keep several heavily armed and specially trained SWAT teams at bay for four hours, while at the same time the two boys continue to murder innocent students and ultimately do the SWAT team’s job by dispatching themselves? What kind of police strategy involves simply waiting four hours until the shooting stops and the perpetrators are dead and then finally going in to count the bodies?
Yes, I am second-guessing and I wasn’t there. There is an unasked question and an untold story here.
JAMES B. DAVIS
Los Angeles
* It is getting to be “can you top this.” Is it any real surprise the killings at Columbine High School have happened? With our present culture in violent television, violent movies and violent video games under the guise of entertainment, we continue to blunder along hoping there will be no others. Well, it won’t be at this juncture. How many student body counts and injuries are we to look forward to? Are we going to be serious about this? What in the hell is it going to take to end this slaughter?
WAYNE E. SCOTT
Camarillo