Taking Gun Rights Campaign to Schools

What a good contrast, your editorial “Each Tragedy Has a Name” (July 13) and John R. Lott Jr.’s commentary, “Letting Teachers Pack Guns Will Make America’s Schools Safer” (Commentary). Your editorial is correct; we can know the name of every victim. But can we know the name of each person who has avoided robbery, rape or home invasion because he or she had a gun? There is an inherent bias in your editorial, framed as the old joke about “only bad news makes the newspapers.” What about the good news?

Perhaps Utah has the best plan, to allow schoolteachers to (potentially) pack guns. If the potential gang members don’t know when or if a teacher may have a gun, it may deter them from bringing their own guns to class.

Joe Cobb

Dana Point

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It sounds unbelievable, but the gun lobby’s answer to school violence is to put more guns into our children’s schools. It could give a whole new meaning to “Raise your hands, children.” But seriously, this is the primary agenda of those in the gun lobby, and they are pushing hard all across the country. And it is not just about teachers -- they want to let almost anyone carry guns into schools, shopping malls, baseball games, day-care centers, hospitals, neighborhood parks and even bars.

The threat is real. Just this year, the gun lobby has pressured several states into enacting laws that let people carry guns almost anywhere they want. And now it is bringing this extreme agenda to California.

Unless more people get involved and fight back against the gun lobby’s armed agenda, our schools and public spaces may soon become free-fire zones.

Mary Leigh Blek

President Emeritus

Million Mom March

Laguna Hills