Dear Editor:
It seems to me that Mr. Steve Huppert of Christiansburg is on the right track. (Letter to the Editor, “Mental health/ gun control,” Saturday, April 28.)
To deal fundamentally with the problem of shootings in schools, churches, concerts, and the like, we have to anticipate the potential threat posed by homicidal psychotics.
This is not a simple problem area. After some shootings, acquaintances of the shooter sometimes say, ”I told you this was coming.” Sometimes the shooters advertise their intentions. And sometimes acquaintances say, “He (the shooter) was such a fine person. I can’t believe he shot those children.”
Even if mental health concerns are identified, the legal rights of the persons involved must be acknowledged. Somebody may act oddly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he (almost always a he) is a threat.
The country is full of peculiar people, all of whom have rights. This is a very complex problem that, as Mr. Huppert has pointed out, has been inadequately addressed for far too long.
And this is only a slice of the total problem. A big piece of the problem is shootings in the parts of cities where the American Family model has largely collapsed; where for several generations male children have had few positive role models.
There are plenty of reasons for this, bigotry prominently among them, but not nearly enough is being done to set things right.
Meanwhile, other segments of the society are generating increasing savagery. Among these are groups that as part of their religious doctrine call for mass murder.
Another vicious trend is the rise of gangs, who increasingly make it clear to schoolchildren, in some localities, that the kids must become dedicated members, or die. Or both. (It is interesting also that gangs are now employing baseball bats in addition to pistols. Bats leave some of the victims paralyzed for life, and they and their families in misery, which to the gangs is a superior outcome. )
All in all, it is evident that focusing on the size of gun magazines, and on disarming the most law-abiding segments of the society, evades the fundamental problems.
Those problems have less to do with guns than with the humans who pull the triggers. And our efforts to deal with the humans are totally inadequate.
D. P. Kirchner,
Glen Echo, Maryland
