Let’s Love Kids More Than Guns

To The Editor:

In general and on many specifics, I agree with Mr. Romberg’s letter last week about what must be done to limit gun violence in the US and fully support that we must demand more of our elected officials. I applaud his speaking up despite the likelihood some from his own party will be writing in to disavow his take. I respect his choice to stand up and say enough is enough!

To further Mr. Romberg’s points:

• No one is advocating for taking away your shotguns, hunting rifles, or reasonable hand guns. While the need to own a gun that can take out a buffalo at 1,000 yard is debatable, these represent an overall low risk of being used in a massacre.

• I absolutely agree, as does an estimated 2/3 of the population (based on repeated, non-partisan polling on this topic), that we need a rigid process that ensures the owner of firearms have been vetted for criminal and/or mental health issues and trained to properly use/store these weapons. Part of the licensing process must be a properly performed mental health evaluation to ensure these dangerous weapons are kept out of the hands of those who would be likely to do harm to themselves or others. We cannot keep using mental health as a scapegoat then do nothing to confirm a gunowner’s mental health. In going a bit further, firearm owners should be held accountable when negligence and/or improper storing is proven to be a contributing factor to the use of their weapons in a crime.

• While I fully agree with Mr. Romberg’s point to ban automatic weapons, I do have to diverge a bit on the semi-automatic point. I do believe that in lieu of eliminating semi-automatic weapons, we need to limit the capacity of semi-automatic weapons. If you cannot kill a deer, hog, bear, moose, or whatever with three shots, you probably don’t need the weapon you have. Maybe more training and some time at a gun range would be of greater value than more bullets in the magazine.

• Absolutely agree on increased (and would argue permanent) security officers on every campus. Cost more? Sure, but what are our children’s lives worth?

If you want to own an assault weapon, I invite you to go visit your local military recruiter. They can get you signed up to go to a 6-12 week induction/ training process during which you will be exposed to how to properly carry, use, and store an assault weapon. Following this induction period, you’ll have a wonderful eight year commitment (active + reserve) to serve this country we all love so much.

In addition to what Mr. Romberg advocates for, we must eliminate bump-stocks (used to make semi-automatic weapons operate in an automatic manner), high capacity magazines, and raise the age to purchase a firearm to 21. Cigarettes and alcohol are too dangerous for an 18 year old, but it seems our politicians seem to think an assault weapon is perfectly fine. Insanity.

Mental health is always the go-to scapegoat for our politicians. It does take a mentally disturbed person to perpetrate such a heinous crime; however, every nation on the face of the earth face mental health issues and these mass shootings seem to happen predominantly in the US. As of last week, 27 school shootings have happened in the US since the beginning of 2022. The whole rest of the globe has had six (a seventh is reported but unable to confirm), based on reporting. When we say it’s a mental health issue, we’re completely ignoring the gun issue we have at the root of this.

Again, I’d like to thank Mr. Romberg for speaking up despite the ‘love’ he will be shown in the upcoming edition of the FCR. Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t doing the easy thing. Mr. Romberg, you did the RIGHT thing!

I want to live in an America that loves its children more than it loves its guns.

Eric Green

La Grange