Letters to the editor

Training ground for killers

Movies and TV stations that teach "how to do it." They both should be fined a $1 million each time they do it.

I can't e-mail it, but after President Obama's tearful speech recently, this could be one easy way as our people in Washington just won't do it.

Robert "Skip" Brandt

Carson City

School board member's concerns are misguided

After reading school board member Barbara Myers' letter to the editor, I am deeply concerned with some of her critical comments.

The school bond focused on many issues including safety upgrades. So far the bond has accomplished much to improve overall safety for Carson City School District students. Asbestos abatement, roofing repairs, and the new multi-purpose/weight room address safety concerns. The former training area behind the bleachers of the high school's upper mezzanine, where wrestlers and students pursued their activities was inferior and a long-standing hazardous area.

The bond paid to remove portable classrooms and has redone the entrance and administration office at Empire. There will be similar upgrades at other schools. This ensures one secure entrance through the administrative office before entering the school. These upgrades have been reported to Mrs. Myers over the past two years and she has expressed her pleasure (according to the school district board meeting minutes) and never publicly expressed her concern over the "missing" key card entrances. She now proclaims her concerns via the newspaper by politicizing the horrific events that recently occurred in Connecticut.

Mrs. Myers concerns over safety are legitimate; however, her letter is misguided. And while she apologizes in her letter, she now owes the community an apology for grandstanding and raising concerns over security in the newspaper first instead of at a school board meeting. An apology to the wrestling program is also appropriate, as if the multi-purpose room they practice in is a reason that our schools are not secure.

Cassie Carter

Carson City

Tribute to deceased children

Tho short is their season

As is angels returning

To Heaven's door

Etched in our hearts, forevermore.

Forever more

The children and babies

Granted blessings with birth,

Then returning back homeward

After short time on earth.

No one but God

Knows the reason and rhyme

When angels and children

Appear for short time.

Like a beautiful flower

Conceived in pure love

Tho short is their season

They return high above.

J.P. O'Horgan

Virginia City

Solution for violence is less guns

Why does America have the most gun deaths in the world? America, with 5 percent of the world's population, has 50 percent of the guns. Hmmm.

Now the NRA advocates putting guns in schools, maintaining that an armed presence will deter massacres by madmen. But wait. There was an armed guard at Columbine High School, armed security force at Virginia Tech, heavily armed trained soldiers at Fort Hood. Yet these places experienced terrible massacres.

The NRA is a shill for gun manufacturers just to increase sales. It uses the Second Amendment as dope to brainwash people into believing the right-wing fantasy that the framers wanted to encourage popular armed uprisings over grievances.

In reality, the framers, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, et al. wrote the Constitution and Second Amendment to create a strong central government with a citizen military force (militia) to defeat insurrection, not encourage uprisings. They were mostly men of wealth with a huge stake in an orderly society. The Second Amendment was concerned with "security" and "well-regulated" militias to ensure what the Constitution called "domestic tranquility." Thus the language of the Second Amendment clearly aimed at maintaining order within the country and to protect against chaos.

The American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association said, "Guns have no place in schools. Period. We must do everything to reduce the possibility of gunfire in schools."

To propose that putting more firepower into more hands in more places will reduce deaths is so preposterous and inane as to border on insanity.

Vince Agamenone

Carson City

Responsible gun ownership needed

Guns serve two purposes. Guns injure and guns can kill. And in the wrong hands, guns are more than twice as dangerous. Guns don't kill on their own without people behind them. If you wish to be a gun owner, then you need to take the responsibility that goes along with gun ownership. Keep guns away from children, and lock them up where even a unbalanced person cannot get access.

Assault weapons belong in law enforcement and the military only, not among the general public. Coat lockers or some type of refuge shelter in each classroom at school need to be built bullet-proof and securely locked from the inside. An armed officer needs to present in every school. That officer needs to call for backup when he/she is deterred away from the only entrance.

Zero tolerance is the only way to go. As a child growing up in a small town where duck hunting was common, I heard of too many children getting a hold of a gun and accidentally shooting a sibling. Prevention is key.

Ann Burke

Carson City

The blame rests with society

In light of all the discussions and soul searching related to the tragedy at Sandy Hook, I have taken a moment to pause and reflect concerning the murder of defenseless school children.

We are all trying to understand and to see what can be done to better protect our children, so as to prevent this from ever happening again. This is all well and good and I understand the need. Then it strikes me that we are responsible for the killing of over 84 million babies and counting, through legalized abortions. Where is the outpouring of care and concern for those innocent lives? Why not a president's task force to see if there is a better way to approach this issue? No gun was used to kill them, yet they are dead. Do we blame the mother, the doctor, or do we blame ourselves?

The same is true for Sandy Hook, the gun is not to blame, no more than the doctor or the mother is to blame for the abortion. The blame rests with society. To enact laws against abortions will not stop them from happening. To enact laws against guns will not stop shootings from happening. In both cases, it is up to the individual to make the decision to perform the killing regardless of the law.

Kelly Madigan

Carson City