In his June 20 letter “Another shooting, another speech,” Peter Williamson’s use of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, from January 2007, to debunk President Obama’s comments regarding the tragic events at the Charleston African Methodist Episcopal Church, invokes a finely parsed article to address a president he doesn’t like and a bloody, horrific, sprawling social issue.
For starters, neither the president nor the majority of people aghast at the gun violence in our country are espousing banning guns. The most common recommendations regarding gun ownership are regulation and training, which at least match those required to obtain a driver’s license and then expanding our look at, and finding solutions for, the many social ills that produce a segment of people who see bullets as the answer to their unhappiness.
But most importantly, we need to begin those expansions by electing a Congress willing to take a sane position. The National Rifle Association has hijacked our national common sense with their paranoid, reckless, hysterical rhetoric intended to spread fear and panic instead of thoughtful solutions to our national propensity for pumping hate into the barrel of a gun.
Lois Murphy
Vancouver