Readers share views on gun control, school schooting

Following Friday’s shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the Daily Bee posted a note on its Facebook page encouraging conversation on gun control and recent mass shootings.

You can join in the conversation on the Daily Bee’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/dailybee or comment below.

• It’s time to take violence seriously. Guns are just a tool, like a bat or knife. What does the NRA have to do with it? People have been killing people since the beginning, there just wasn’t huge amounts of media and politicization.

James Lindsay

• Semi-automatic guns (used in this case and most other mass killings), are and should be illegal. We need to preserve our right to self protect and hunt. Crazies will always find a way to acquire a weapon. Let’s start to deal with the real problem … the lack of personal responsibility and entitlement in our country, let alone, the mental health of our deteriorating nation. How naive and starry eyed to think our government could honestly control anything.

Jane Ingram Riter

• It’s a mental health issue. We could outlaw guns just as we have heroin, cocaine and, at one time, alcohol. Of course, we saw how well that worked out. We need to have a hard discussion about mental illness. Additionally, the disturbing trend from today, the Portland mall shooting just the other day, the Colorado theater shooting and Virginia Tech are that all were done by males in their 20s and all were in gun free zones where the shooters would be guaranteed to meet little if no resistance.

Dan McDonald

• The NRA has nothing to do with the school shooting …  They’re against the misuse of guns. Guns don’t kill people; if I set a gun on a table, it won’t kill someone. My gun hasn’t killed anyone.

Collins Calvin

• This guy made choice to use violence. All violent acts are a choice, rape, murder, molestation, human trafficking etc. I am sorry for each family. Making guns illegal and taking away rights are not going to fix anything.

Brooke Spencer

• Who is calling for guns to be made illegal? Better regulation is the key here. There are standards I must meet if I want to buy beer. Why not tighten up the standards for who should be allowed to possess guns?

Dion Nizzi

• If all the money directed at gun control lobbying was put toward the mental health system perhaps some of these people would get the help they need and not carry out their misery on others.

Sandi Terry

• Even if guns are illegal, they will still find a black market to get them when they really want them, and for whatever reason. Leaving the rest of us unprotected by taking away that right will be a lose-lose situation. Maybe require handgun owners to have a safe or lockable case to prevent theft. Give a psych evaluation before selling a weapon to anyone … encourage gun safety and education instead of fear … if more citizens have a good aim maybe it will detour the sociopaths from acting out.

Lindsay Jones

• Very strict regulation is appropriate. All the arguments about guns not killing is naive. They do kill, and crazy people are able to kill more people with efficient methods such as any semiautomatic weapon. They are too easy to get. They are ubiquitous in our society, and need not be. It’s true that there will be ways for people to inflict mayhem, but our rabid gun happy society makes it easier.

The self-protection argument is just plain wrong; generally speaking you are more likely to be shot with a weapon you possess than to shoot another. And if you think a bunch of camo-clad weekend warrior wolverines are gonna hold off a governmental army, that just makes you plain ignorant.

I own hunting weapons, and I hunt, I would never, for a second, support the NRA in any form. I welcome, with open arms, strict regulation that would make it difficult for me to buy a weapon.

Sean Donnelly

• Oh my I can’t believe it’s going again. People forget the Oklahoma City bombing were more than 150 people were killed with nothing more than a rental truck filled with fertilizer and diesel fuel. Should we outlaw those items as well because they were used commit a terrible crime?

It’s not guns killing people it’s bad people behind the gun that kill people. We need to be more aware of those around us and report people that we know are acting strangely. We need to look at people in our own homes. When are you going to wake up and realize the problem is us; not guns, not the government. It’s our own failure to want to be involved. It’s now come out that this young fellow was an autistic. Perhaps his folks should have sought professional help for him. And he definitely should not have qualified to purchase handguns or semi automatic weaponry.

Rick Larkin

• Mentally ill, undiagnosed mentally ill, angry people are allowed to own guns because of lax gun control laws. I feel surprised that so many people think that owning a gun really protects them, occasionally an intruder may be held at bay. However, a gun has nothing on a drone so the constitutional function of gun possession is really outdated. Here is what I thought today. We have a system that is not working with relation to guns, gun control and the NRA (this issue is related to the NRA, they are massive lobbyist against tighter gun regulation). I think most people could look at the situation in our country and agree with that. Why do we keep apologizing for and protecting a system that is not working? Why are people so against opening up the dialogue and trying to create something that does work? Why is it such an offense to ask our Canadian neighbors how their society deals with gun control in a seemingly more effective way? Cultures that survive adapt and change. I love eating the wild game that my hunting husband brings home. I would give that up if it meant saving the life of one of those massacred five year olds. I would give that up if it meant maybe saving the life of one of those little souls.

Amelia Mathias

• If all teachers were properly trained and carried guns, few if any children would have died today! Millions of lawful gun owners have never killed anyone. Taking guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens will not stop violent criminals from acting out. Drugs are illegal … what makes anyone think criminals will not have access to outlawed guns? Had the teachers been armed, the cowardly person may have thought twice before going there and murdering innocent children. Arming and properly training all citizens will be more of a deterrent to crazies than anything else. Taking guns out of law abiding citizens’ hands will only create more victims.

Cynthia Schmitt Bartholomew

• The simple reality is all of us who are sane have the capacity to be heinous, so the distinction between good and bad is as close as one’s next decision. We can all choose to lose it and become “criminally insane.” And the chronically insane have no business with guns, especially assault weapons like the .223 Bushmaster used today. We as a people are failing miserably. Something has to change.

Mike Reno

• Gun control is not about taking away guns — it is about establishing a 48-hour waiting period to buy a handgun. It is about doing background checks so that the possibility of keeping handguns out of the possession of mentally unstable people is reduced. Outlawing guns is not, nor ever has been, part of gun control — that is propaganda spread by lobbyists and organizations that serve to profit from the sale of handguns.

 And this suggested legislation came about following the attempt on President Reagan’s life — by John Hinkley who thought that Jody Foster actually was the 13-year-old prostitute she played in “Taxi Driver” — and that by assassinating a president he would get her attention. James Brady took a bullet that day and remains to this day permanently brain damaged — this bill is named after him …

Donna Brundage