Letters to the editor | Sunday, June 5, 2022: Guns, guns and more guns — and tears
A nation’s surreal grief
On Memorial Day we are supposed to be memorializing those lost in war but it’s also a sad day in America when we are memorializing the many innocent people that are being gunned down just so a few can exercise their right to own a gun. I wish I could see in my lifetime an outright ban on assault weapons and guns as a whole.
How we can sit silently by and see our babies gunned down is beyond my comprehension. I truly don’t get it. It doesn’t surprise me that the world is watching and thinking the same thing. Living here is like living in a sort of twilight zone. It’s almost too much to take when you hear and see these precious souls that have been killed. I often wonder when it will be us. I don’t think anymore that anyone is safe.
Jane Mazurczak, Salida
Get AR-15s off streets
Yet another mass shooting, yet another call for hardening schools. Will hardening work? Are our kids safe? How about grocery stores, churches, Walmarts, and every other soft target in the U.S.?
Schools cannot be hardened against an AR-15 assault weapon. If doors are locked, shooters will shoot out windows. AR-15 bullets are unstoppable. They go right through doors, walls, and standard police body armor.
School guards can’t stand against an AR-15. It’s suicide.
SWAT teams can’t respond in time to stop the carnage. Mass shootings with AR-15 style weapons happen at light speed. Within minutes, hundreds of rounds are fired and dozens of people are dead.
The answer? Get AR-15 style weapons off the streets, and especially out of the hands of teenagers. Almost all mass shooters were under 21.
Raise the age for owning an assault rifle to 21 or ban them completely. Pass red-flag laws. Allow police to temporarily take away guns from unhinged people. Enforce these laws by closing gun-show loopholes, online loopholes, and requiring background checks.
Police forces throughout America overwhelmingly favor these laws. Let’s get them done.
Marvin Keshner, Sonora
Modern law based on muskets
The Second Amendment is only one sentence, 27 words. It’s simple and basic because the gun it was based on was simple and basic. The musket could only fire one aimed shot, by a well-trained person, about every 15 seconds.
Now we live in a country that has over 400 million guns and they are all far more advanced than a musket. But we continue to base all of our gun laws on a single sentence that was only considering muskets. Perhaps it’s time to update, given the times and technology. Update doesn’t mean confiscate.
One more thing: the idea that we need our guns to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government is obsolete. We have paid to ensure that our military is unbeatable, by any enemy foreign or domestic. Our 400 million guns wouldn’t put a scratch in a carrier strike group, a B-52 bomber or a swarm of predator drones. Seems we shot ourselves in the foot for that argument.
Tim de Lorimier, Modesto
Ban guns feared by cops
A journalist asked Ted Cruz why school mass shootings only happen in America. Ted fled. The answer to that question is, only in America can the public buy assault weapons.
Mass shootings is a mental health problem. The AR-15 was designed for the sole purpose of killing human beings. People who buy them pretend they are killing people when they shoot at human silhouette targets. Or worse, they may actually want to kill people. That is the mental health issue that needs to be addressed.
Since Columbine, the number of mass shootings has risen relative to the number of assault weapons sold. While a madman slaughtered schoolchildren in Uvalde, 19 policemen hunkered in the hallway outside the classroom for 45 minutes, fearing an AR-15. The only coherent option is to outlaw any guns that policemen are so afraid of that they’d let innocent kids get killed instead.
“Guns don’t kill people” is a lie that no sane person can believe. “People with guns kill people” is factual. Gun-obsessed politicians who allow people to possess people-killing machines are accomplices in the death of those children. That goes for people who voted for and contributed to those politicians as well.
J. Jason Gale, Riverbank
Restrict lethal weapons
At times like these, discussions point to a number of solutions, including changes in our approach to mental illness, to the way schools are designed and accessed, to law enforcement training and, of course, access to lethal weapons only designed for killing humans.
A careful examination of each option reveals that all but one is costly or trample on any number of other, more important individual rights, especially privacy, and provide no long-term promise of reducing or eliminating the threat of death while going about your everyday life. Only the last offers some promise with little increased societal cost.
There is a difference between taking away all guns and conscientiously controlling access to the most lethal weapons that serve no useful purpose beyond killing humans, including body armor, unlimited amounts of ammunition, clips and all the paraphernalia required by the modern-day assassin.
No number of arms or training will keep you from dying trying to defend yourself against the government. Better to spend your time and money investing, sending your kids to college, taking trips to Disneyland or just enjoying the fruits of your labor.
Richard C. Cato, Modesto
The price we pay
Those who own or buy an AR-15 assault-style weapon should be required to watch the CBS “60 Minutes” episode of May 29 which demonstrated the damage that a single bullet from this gun can cause to a human body.
DNA was needed to identify several of the 10-year-old victims of the Uvalde massacre. Those parents will bury the unrecognizable remains of their child. Is that the price we are willing to pay to allow any fool to own a weapon of war?
Glenore Flanders, Turlock
Backward logic
It’s like the story of the man who is praised for putting out the fire only to find out that he started the fire in the first place. Gun makers, the NRA and the GOP conspire to block basic and sensible gun ownership regulations and also block limitation on the sale of a weapon that’s designed for the sole purpose of killing as many people as quickly as possible. When a person who shouldn’t own such a weapon uses it for its designed purpose, they shed crocodile tears. They then declare that the only remedy for the problem is for everyone to be armed. They have now solved the problem they created.
It’s hard to stomach but we now live in a country where guns are valued more than children’s lives. Who’s responsible? We are, of course, for electing people to Congress who turn a blind eye to murder in exchange for personal gain.
Michael King, Modesto
Police should weigh in
Someone tell me why the loudest voices for banning AR-15 assault rifles aren’t from the cops who have to go up against them.
Steve Ringhoff, Modesto
A safe place in Gustine
Mine and my family’s hearts are with Uvalde, Texas and the families who have been affected today as they face something no one should go through. Texas lost 21 beautiful souls who were taken too soon.
As a way to try to help support our community and most importantly our town’s youth, the Gustine Traveling Library has declared that the Traveling Library headquarters will be a community safe place.
With the tragic events that took place in Texas and the many before it we know that one way to possibly prevent such acts from happening in communities around us is by offering support to those who may think there isn’t any. We welcome everyone to come through our doors.
If you are a person dealing with challenges, know:
You are not alone. You are cared about. You are loved. We are here for you.
We will never let this these types of actions against our own define who we are as a nation but rather by how we rally together in times of crisis and show to the world that love will always conquer all.
Zachery Ramos, Gustine
It’s not just the weapons
Violence in our society is an epidemic. Is it the weapons that are used or is it something else? Most of the weapons used in recent mass injuries and killings are vehicles, bombs, knives and firearms. All of these, including the types of firearms used, have been around for 70 to 100 years or longer.
Did we have this type of carnage back then? No, we did not. Then what is it that has happened in the last few years that is the cause?
There is not an easy answer, however our politicians want to grab onto a simple cliche or headline. Most of our citizens can see that it is not one thing.
Peter Camarena, Modesto