Letters to the Editor: If only the off-duty police officer at Costco in Corona didn’t have a gun

To the editor: The tragic shooting at the Costco in Corona last June shows why we need more gun control.

The National Rifle Assn. would have you believe that only “bad” or mentally unstable individuals misuse guns. In fact, all humans have moments of anger, jealousy, drunkeness, depression or just bad judgment that access to a firearm can turn lethal. I have a personal connection to the son of a police officer who killed himself while showing his friends his father’s weapon.

What would have happened if the off-duty police officer at Costco who killed a man with schizophrenia and seriously wounded his parents had been unarmed? Perhaps he would have hit the young man with his fists and that would have ended it? And why on Earth were the aged mother and father also shot?

Recently, when I went to visit my husband at his care facility, the employees were being given instructions on what to do if there was an active shooter. Is this the type of country we want to live in now?

Rita Skinner, Riverside

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To the editor: Los Angeles Police Department Officer Salvador Sanchez’s lawyer said, “It’s just a terrible tragedy that we have two sets of well-meaning, good parents who were trying to help their children.”

He neglects to mention that one parent had a gun and shot the other “well-meaning, good parents” and their adult son.

There’s a good reason California isn’t a “stand your ground” state: Being scared is a normal human reaction and shouldn’t be the excuse for shooting unarmed people.

Barry Davis, Agoura Hills