Opinion: How can a great country allow children to be murdered day after day?
I grew up in the 1930s and I always believed that America, my country, was the greatest. But I was wrong. How can a great country allow children to be murdered, day after day, with automatic guns?
We cannot change the laws. Our senators will not vote to stop the sale of these guns because, if they do, the NRA will be after them and they will not get reelected. Getting reelected is more important than the lives of children. I don't need to say these senators are mostly Republican, do I?
Art Cornell, Osterville
Assault weapons must be banned
The framers of our constitution and its amendments did not know what an assault rifle was. They did not imagine a world with violent video games or the internet. They did not foresee the complexities of the society in which we live.
While the right to bear arms should protect citizens; the sale of assault weapons or other multi-round ammunition weapons to common citizens is not in our best interest as a nation. Just as the sale of suicide vests, hand grenades or other weapons of mass destruction should not be on the shelves of your local Walmart, assault weapons need to be banned in our country. The only folks who need them are law enforcement (SWAT and other special forces) or the military.
Let's look at the influence of video games such as “Call of Duty”, “Postal”, “Mortal Combat” to name a few. I worked with teens for 27 years; trust me video games influence teens — throw in a healthy dose of depression or psychosis and you have a recipe for disaster.
I have attended the funerals of more students than I care to mention — many of them related to guns and violence, some of them related to guns and self-harm. All of them played video games. Yes, suicide and depression happened prior to the age of video games, but now the mentally ill teen has the complication of hours of de-sensitization in front of a violent screen.
And sometimes, as we have just experienced in Uvalde, Buffalo and Sandy Hook, the unthinkable happens. A mass shooting.
Remembrance: Eastham Elementary School annual walk to the Evergreen Cemetery to decorate graves
The gun lobby is using the Second Amendment to protect the corporate weapons industry at the cost of the lives of our children. When is enough, enough?
God help us to put partisan politics aside and find a solution to this illness that has swept our nation. God hold tight the families that have been blown apart by these tragedies.
Kathleen Phelan, Chatham
Gun violence continues as we do nothing
After the murder of 19 fourth-grade children in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, we heard the usual excuse: “We had no warning signs.”
We’ve had plenty of warning signs. We know them as Columbine, Aurora, El Paso, Tree of Life synagogue, a Christian church in Columbus, South Carolina, Sandy Hook and too many others to name.
And we do nothing.
J. Robert McNutt. Orleans
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod Letters: After Buffalo, Uvalde shootings, ban assault weapons
