School Shooting, Senate Gun Vote

Re “6 Students Shot in Georgia; Boy, 15, Surrenders,” May 21:

It’s still the guns, stupid. Guns are sexy. Guns are not just killing tools, guns are weapons of mass seduction. I doubt that troubled kids would get the same excitement from carefully planned attacks with rocks, baseball bats or even knives.

Anyone who has ever held a gun knows the power and control that heavy, cold handful of steel conveys. These troubled teenagers use guns like addictive drugs. Shootout rehearsals and “playacting out” against their imagined enemies fill lonely, undirected time. Finding the nerve to carry out their plan gives meaning and purpose to their lives.

Would the media give so much coverage to school rock-throwing, baseball battings or even knifings? Media give tons of attention to shootings of every kind. More seduction, a vicious circle. Why couldn’t we have a war on guns, like the war on drugs?

KENDRA PRAVETTONI

Los Angeles

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Well, I for one feel safer now that the Senate has passed more gun-control laws that the Justice Department won’t prosecute (May 21). Has The Times’ crack team of editorial writers and reporters ever investigated how many violations of existing gun control laws have not been prosecuted?

BERNARD PETERS

Placentia

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Must this really be the American way? It took several school shooting incidents and 15 dead in Colorado for the Senate to take baby steps toward gun control. What will it take for the Congress to take real steps toward the total ban of all kinds of guns in this country--a civil war?

PAUL JAMES TRAVERS

Sherman Oaks

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Everyone, including Jann S. Wenner of Rolling Stone (Commentary, May 21), is pointing fingers of blame for these school shootings. I have a great idea! Why not blame and punish the shooters, whoever they may be, in any and all shootings? If teenagers are going to use guns while committing crimes they should be held accountable. This probably makes too much sense.

BILL WINKLER

Long Beach

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Dan Quayle had a point (May 20). The current brouhaha going on in Congress has absolutely nothing to do with children buying guns. When a ship has a serious leak, you don’t install new pumps, you put it in dry dock for repairs!

“The U.S. Ship of Schools” is in dire need of overhaul. No real discipline, no enforced dress code, sexes not separated in classes (an absolute imperative!) and not enough teacher/parent cooperation.

I suggest that school board members take a trip overseas and visit a school or two in England and Europe. They would find a great deal less “permissiveness.”

GEORGE PELLING

Laguna Woods

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“I’m so scared,” the Georgia high school shooting suspect said. Could that be a big part of it? Could it be that the pressures on some kids today are scaring them to the breaking point?

BILL McAULIFFE

San Diego

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Home schooling, anyone?

H.J. BLEECKER

Riverside

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In their anti-gun zealotry, gun control advocates made “guaranteed helpless victim zones” out of our schools. Events in Littleton and Atlanta prove that criminals who intend to slaughter our children are not held back by laws saying they can’t bring guns and explosives to school campuses. It’s time we enact laws that will truly protect our children from gun violence in our public schools. We need to make firearms training part of teacher certification in California and require all teachers to carry a firearm when on duty. Ruthless killers shooting our children only stop when they run out of bullets or someone else with a gun stops them. With every teacher armed, criminals bent on destruction would be no more likely to attack a school than they would a police station.

MacLANE C. KEY

Los Angeles

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Re “4 Youths Held in Alleged ‘Massacre’ Plot at School,” May 16:

What more proof do we need that “overkill” coverage of violence provides an example to others to do the same?

SAM PLUNKETT

Sherman Oaks

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I’m so tired of hearing the argument offered by gun control opponents that since not everyone obeys the law, that means that gun laws don’t work. Just because some people violate a law doesn’t mean there is no benefit to society in having that law on the books! There are thousands of violations against the law prohibiting homicide in this country every year, but does that mean that since the murder laws aren’t being complied with 100% they’re useless?

A law gives society the right to imprison those who violate it, thus lessening the opportunity for offenders to do it again. Make the manufacture, sale and possession of assault weapons illegal in this country and there will still be assault weapons, but at least the police will have the right to put people in jail if they’re caught operating an assault weapon factory, or if they’re caught with a truck full of assault weapons.

JEFFREY VAUGHN

Encino

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Prohibition of firearms ownership by the public would probably be just as effective as the prohibition of alcohol was under the 18th Amendment.

MARION FEDORA

Landers

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Amendment 2a: The right to enjoy domestic tranquillity (and a degree of freedom from gunfire, as is enjoyed in the world’s other advanced democracies) will be protected as assiduously as the purported right to maintain unlimited personal arsenals of dangerous weapons.

GREGORY WRIGHT

Sherman Oaks

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Let me get this straight--the government blames the media, who blame the NRA, who blame the shooters, who blame their parents, who blame the government.

Am I missing something here?

TARIK M. TRAD

Glendale