Gun Laws and School Shootings

* Re “Moral Absolutes, Not More Gun Laws,” Commentary, April 27: What an imaginative writer that Tom Clancy is! Pinning the Colorado shootings on the lack of prayer and moral (i.e., religious) instruction in public schools was classic. That he never actually attended a public school but received his religious training in a Catholic school holds no irony for him apparently. This does allow him, though, to imagine what occurs and what should occur in public schools.

For him to admit that maybe the parents were at fault is a great example of risk-taking writing, especially since the kids were stockpiling bombs and weapons without their parents’ telling them that it was wrong. I admire Clancy’s ability to stick to his theme despite logic and fact.

KURT PAGE

Laguna Niguel

* Clancy begins by blasting gun-control advocates for using the Littleton incident as fodder for their own political views, then uses the remainder of his article to expound his own. Clancy’s argument for moral absolutism is dangerous because “absolute truths” always lead to absolute solutions. Had the two young men been a bit more “value-neutral,” and slightly less absolute, they might not have appointed themselves judges and executioners of their fellow students.

MICHAEL GROSS

Pasadena

* Somebody needs to tell Clancy that one of those “public schoolteachers who do not view morals instruction as being within their professional purview” gave his life while saving Columbine students.

STACEY BEARD

Trabuco Canyon

* In the aftermath of the Littleton shootings, we hear the usual cry that this would not happen if prayer were allowed back in the schools. Children need not pray in school to demonstrate love in their hearts. The physical location where prayer is conducted is not nearly as important as the content of the prayer or the actions of the person praying.

They can conduct prayer services hourly in school. But as long as those praying students leave the prayer sessions with hate and intolerance in their hearts for those who are different, tragedies like this will continue to occur.

PERRY GOLDSTEIN

Fountain Valley

* Re “Kids Haven’t Changed; Their Weapons Have,” Commentary, April 26: I wish that Father Gregory Boyle and others would stop harping on guns as being the main villain. Our religious leaders should be preaching and writing about values and character education. They should be standing on the rooftops condemning our culture of death. They should get on their soapboxes and teach kids right from wrong. Focusing on guns will not eliminate this problem.

Every leader must use his or her bully pulpit to stress to kids the need to be decent human beings. Parents must set limits again and say “no” to their children. Where are the adults and grown-ups to help turn the tide? Please, let’s speak with one voice about the need to have character.

MARK COHEN

Huntington Beach

* My compliments to Boyle for his on-target article. But to be fair and accurate, the word “boys” should be substituted for “kids” throughout the article. Testosterone-driven males use weapons to kill and maim, not girls.

MAXINE DEL GALLO

Irvine

* Is there anyone out there naive enough to believe that if all good people turned in their guns, bad people wouldn’t have any?

PETER W. VASILION

Palos Verdes Estates

* Much of the reaction to the Littleton tragedy has been to blame the NRA, media, government or the school system. These organizations, though powerful, are not responsible for rearing a child. The parents are. From birth to adulthood, parents are the most influential factor in a child’s life--some by their presence, others by their absence.

KAAREL HAMERSKY

SUSAN HAMERSKY

Woodland Hills

* Why is it that other Western societies, such as England and Scandinavia, understand the very simple equation that human emotions plus guns equals lots of killings, but we Americans just don’t get it?

Until we can get over our macho, Freudian hang-ups about guns, we are doomed to experience such tragedies over and over again.

It’s the guns, stupid!

NORMAN W. NIELSEN

Highland Park

* We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under guns, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

JEROLD DRUCKER

Tarzana

* What a tragedy that the people of Kosovo have no NRA and 2nd Amendment. With the right to be armed, many more would be alive and well instead of the latest victims of gun control by an oppressive government.

RAY PETTIT

Northridge

* Over and over the defenders of individual gun ownership claim that the 2nd Amendment guarantees it as a right. That is false. The aim of the 2nd Amendment is supporting “a well-regulated militia,” which today is the National Guard.

And the courts, including the Supreme Court, have undeviatingly concurred that the 2nd Amendment offers no constitutional protection for individual ownership or purchase of a firearm, unless related “to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated [state] militia.”

GERALD L. LANDSMAN

Huntington Beach

* Up until the last paragraph, I entirely agreed with Mike Downey’s April 28 column, “Suppressing Our Freedoms in the Name of Littleton.” Then he said that, instead of infringing on adolescents’ civil rights by denying them access to video games and Marilyn Manson CDs, we should install “surveillance equipment in halls [and] metal detectors at doors” of public schools.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that high school students will feel at least as infringed upon by being treated as prisoners every school day as they will be being told what games they’ll be allowed to play and which performers they will be allowed to see. The call to lock campuses during school days and install metal detectors and surveillance equipment is part of the same tendency toward “treating [high-school students] like pre-pubescent children and not trusting them, as soon as any of their contemporaries break the rules” he rightly deplored in his column.

MARK GABRISH CONLAN

San Diego