Letters to the Editor 6/15/2022

Safety a priority

After reading the article in The Nugget and also living on Cloverdale, I have several questions. Why weren’t we as residents notified that there was not an arrest made until four days after Tina was murdered? We live less than a mile away from the home she lived in and was murdered at. Safety should have been more of a priority. Very disturbing that the killer was in the area, and located not far from the crime scene four days later.

Kristy Raasch

Gun Legislation

To the Editor:

The Senate is in the process of implementing a bipartisanship agreement on gun legislation. It’s a watered-down version of a bill that the Democrats passed in the House last week. If it passes, President Biden will sign it even though there will be no assault weapons ban and will not even raise the age from 18 to 21 to buy one and would do little to stop mass shootings. The Democrats feel that passing it will be better than doing nothing. Some Republicans will sign it to make it look like they’re doing something, but most Republicans are spineless cowards and won’t sign it because they’re afraid of offending some gun owners.

What is it about gun culture in America? How is it that so many men’s identities are so connected to guns that even just banning one type of gun is too much to ask? Why is the “well-regulated militia” part of the Second Amendment always ignored in an amendment written when assault weapons didn’t even exist? Why are we, the majority, being held hostage in this testosterone-fueled nightmare?

The mental gyrations made to justify this insanity are impressive.

Craig Rullman’s column “Slouching toward Uvalde” in last week’s Nugget is a prime example.

Rullman’s credentials are a “SWAT team leader, a qualified expert on law enforcement responses to terrorism and active killer incidences.” What he feels is necessary is equipping police officers and school police officers to a “gold standard” which would require millions of dollars, thousands of hours of training and basically militarizing our police and our schools.

But his entire premise is about dealing with active shooters.

This is not about stopping a shooter from shooting; it’s about limiting the numbers killed.

In Rullman’s own vast experience his ‘interagency” of “qualified experts” stopped an active killer who went on a rampage killing six people.

They couldn’t prevent six people from getting killed.

So, that’s the deal.

We have to accept that people will die.

This isn’t about Mr. Rullman. I don’t know him, but I bet he would be the first person in line to try to take out an active shooter. He would be a hero or he’d be dead — either way he believes that what he’s proposing is some sort of solution. I guess it is, as long as we accept the premise that school shootings are just a consequence of living in America. Well, I refuse to accept it.

I don’t think there is one person in Sisters who thinks a mass shooting couldn’t happen here. We know it could because anybody, even an 18-year-old kid, can legally get an assault weapon and high capacity magazine, go anywhere and kill a whole lot of people in seconds.

It has to stop.

Terry Weygandt