Since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, there has been a plethora of comments from readers about the crime, gun ownership and the National Rifle Association (NRA). The incident is sad beyond comprehension, but the NRA is not to blame. We will probably never know why Adam Lanza shot 26 people. Reports that he suffered from mental and emotional problems perhaps put much of the blame on his mother, not the NRA. It was she who sent him to target practice.
Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, daytime Saturday television was The Flintstones, Heckle and Jeckle, Little Lulu, Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters. Viewed as politically incorrect by liberals, these programs were taken off the air and replaced with superheroes, fighting men and women, action figures. They contained the diversity the left loves, along with laser guns, rifles, dynamite and weapons galore. Movies and videos with violence and weapons have been the norm for decades. Why would parents today not object to them, as they were raised with these themselves? No, Little Lulu is not the solution, but she sure was less violent than Iron Man and The Hulk.
Those who are intent on wreaking destruction will do so by any means, if not by guns, then by dynamite or fire. Do we outlaw matches?
As with anything else in this country, gun control will be applied selectively and solve nothing. Those who are screaming the loudest for gun control and assailing the NRA are mainly liberals and those on the political left. Looking to disarm Americans, they themselves will continue to own and carry guns. We have seen numerous times in the past, from celebrities to politicians to journalists, a call for arms control and attacking the NRA. In the same breath they will admit themselves to owning guns, claiming they need them for protection and to keep strangers off the property. Why is it justified for them to have guns for protection but not middle class citizens?
Edward Riecks
Howard Beach
