Today's letters: Readers comment on guns, student loans, schools and the decline of morals
What to do about guns
“Guns, guns, guns!” Maybe if we say it enough, buy enough weapons and experience enough mass shootings, the words won’t have any meaning and the shootings will become the new normal. What a horrible thought!
How sickening the present carnage is. So many young innocent lives lost, with the sounds of silence haunting loved ones for years to come. Many of these incidents were preventable. If we only had rational, reasonable gun laws!
Congress needs to live up to its moral and ethical obligation to the people of the United States to make life safer for our citizens by amending the Second Amendment, eliminating its ambiguities regarding “a well regulated militia” and “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” and speaking directly to today’s concerns about guns, particularly assault weapons.
These mass killings are an American tragedy. Should an ordinary American citizen really have the right to own an assault weapon? No! At the cost of all of these innocent lives? No! Reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired on Sept. 13, 2004, and expand banning assault weapons, requiring owners to relinquish assault weapons and making it a felony to own assault weapons; redistributing assault weapons confiscated. Give them to law enforcement and military agencies, and ship them to Ukraine or other international conflicts.
As dreamers, we can just imagine another beautiful day in the United States of America, but without mass shootings and with no assault weapons in sight! Can you? We hope so!
Ted and Barbara Smith, Ocala
Student loan responsibility
It took me eight years to get a four-year degree. Why? Well, my folks did not have the proverbial “pot to pee in.” I went to a local community college while working full-time from 3:30 to midnight five days a week for the company that developed the rocket engine that would eventually put the man on the moon, but we didn’t know that at the time.
As it got closer to releasing the engine to NASA, we had to start working six 12-hour days. My manager asked me what was more important to me, my job or my education. I asked him what he was doing between noon and 1 p.m. His answer, lunch. I said, “Me too, in my car.” After a brief pause, he agreed that as long as I was there by 1 p.m., I could keep my job.
It took me five years to complete the first two, but by then, I had saved enough to finish my education at Florida. I paid off my one loan, we paid off my wife’s loans and then paid on our kids’ loans while they were in college. And now Biden wants to use our tax dollars to pay off student loans for kids who spent thousands getting sometimes meaningless degrees, just to buy votes. Sorry folks, but this is something that should never ever happen.
Dennis P. Birdsall, Rainbow Springs
Hardened schools
Whether it's Columbine, Newtown, Florida, or Texas, doesn't matter — innocent school children are being slaughtered at a rate that should never be tolerated in a civilized country such as ours (not one killing should be tolerated).
We spend millions — make that billions — on educating our children, and I can think of no better way to spend my tax dollars. But, if we are going to allow these mass killings to continue, we are sadly missing the boat.
Schools must be hardened. In plain English, that means some teachers and administrators need to be trained in the use of firearms. Then they need to be carrying every day and everywhere in the school. The alternative is to have patrolling police officers at all times while school is in session.
Will this be expensive? Yes, but the alternative is not acceptable.
Let us begin a rigorous school-arming program nationwide and put a stop to this senseless killing of our most precious asset — our children.
Bill Aker, Ocala
‘They’ don’t exist
I watch the TV show “Wyatt Earp.” I have noticed that if someone comes into Dodge City, Kansas, they have to check their firearms. Who would think that in the glory days of gun fighting there would be gun regulations?
National Public Radio reported that in the first 19 weeks of 2022 there were already 198 mass shootings in the United States. Does this mean we should be content to live in a lawless society?
I see on bumper stickers people believe someone is vying to dismantle the Constitution. I listen as people say and fear that “they” are coming to take away our guns. Politicians, without any evidence, make people fearful that “they” are planning to do away with the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I wonder why people don’t apprise themselves of what it entails to amend the U.S. Constitution. Two-thirds of both houses of Congress would have to agree to the proposed amendment. Then the proposed amendment would have to be ratified by 75% of the state legislatures or conventions before the proposed amendment could be accepted.
Let’s face the fact that our legislature, both nationally and at the state level, can’t even agree which bathroom to use. “They” are not coming to take our guns. There is not even a “they.” Perhaps we are simply being manipulated by others.
Jeff Priest, Ocala
Morals
After another tragic shooting in Texas with no motive or answers, I thought, there are plenty of answers in America! Let me count the ways. No, better the timeline of our own demise. Being old enough (80) to have witnessed history of this cultural decline, I grew up in the ’50s with faith and family upmost as the influencers. Then came the ’60s and the great society and demise of the family structure replaced by the government.
Roe v. Wade and kicking God out of the schools was next. Truth left the scene without any evidence of being there. So, no truth, no foundation. No foundation, no society. As a side note, technology games came along with hyper drugs, and mix them with young males without a male role model and you get what you're getting. What is it? A human created in God’s image devoid of a purpose and thus a lost individual. And he wants everyone to join him in his loneliness without regard to any moral authority since he has been taught there is none. Back to basics is our only hope. Morals are given by a moral authority and there is only one — and it’s not Washington.
Jerry Rodeheaver, Dunnellon
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This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: July 31: Readers comment on guns, student loans, schools and morals
