Our union is imperfect while mass shootings go unchecked: Letter

To the editor:

Kudos to Bruce Anderson for the thoughtful letter to the editor on gun violence.

To further expand on his thoughts, I quote the preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Surely our children deserve these rights, including their “common defense,” throughout their years of education. They deserve “justice, ... domestic tranquility ... general welfare.” Why do our children have to cower in fear that they will not survive the school day, that they will see their friends and teachers and others murdered — actually, extremely mutilated — right in front of them? Why does a young girl have to smear herself with her dead friend’s blood and play dead in the hope of surviving the bullets of a high-powered gun? Why do people have to live the rest of their lives with gaping family losses because their young children are too soon buried in tiny coffins?

Why do some people think that their Second Amendment rights to own high-powered weapons such as AK-47s and AR-15s supersede the rights of our children and grandchildren and others to lead happy, carefree lives? Aren’t they entitled to the guarantees of the Constitution’s preamble?

We are not “a more perfect union” when families are separated from their loved ones through repeated mass shootings — executions at schools, churches, grocery stores, and other places that should provide “domestic tranquility.”

Deborah Biorn

St. Cloud

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Our union is imperfect while mass shootings go unchecked: Letter