Letters to the Editor: We had fire drills. Kids today have active shooter drills. This is insane
To the editor: I am one of the lucky ones. My son wasn’t at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in 1999 when a white supremacist went on a shooting rampage there. And he wasn’t at Parkland High School in Florida or at Columbine or at Sandy Hook. And he also managed to escape the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013, although he was just a block away. (“The teen arrested in Georgia school shooting is not an adult, and shouldn’t be treated like one,” editorial, Sept. 7)
In fact, throughout his entire educational journey, he never participated in an active shooter drill. Having grown up in the Midwest, I took part in tornado and fire drills. Here in Southern California, my son had his share of fire and earthquake drills.
As I watched the coverage of the recent school shooting in Georgia, I realized that active shooter drills are as common today as fire drills. This has to stop.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun violence is the biggest cause of death of children and teens in the U.S. How many more empty prayers will we hear? How many more shooters will we call “monsters”? How many more deaths or injuries will it take before Congress takes aggressive action to control guns?
Terri Jonisch, Northridge
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To the editor: There are more guns in the United States than there are people. The zillionith mass shooting, which took place in Georgia, is the latest grim reminder of the consequences of that.
We read about the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution and feckless arguments from strict constructionists and other so-called constitutional scholars. That document was written in 1787, as I recall from freshman U.S. history. Then, there were no AR-15s or other assault weapons.
Therefore, I believe people in this country can own guns, but only if those weapons conform to the technology that existed when the Constitution was written. So, let people go out in public with their muskets and blunderbusses, which can take a minute to load.
Put that in your 2nd Amendment pipe and smoke it.
Luis Torres, Pasadena
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To the editor: I believe that charging the parent of the alleged Georgia school shooter will have zero impact as a deterrent.
But that isn’t the point. The point is stupidity. From time to time, the stupidity of some people is so profound — such as when one provides a weapon to his disturbed child — that, criminal or not, the act must be punished and we derive some small measure of satisfaction.
Jack Spiegelman, Los Angeles
