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Hagerstown
Gun control does not mean taking away all guns
To the editor:
On Feb. 1, an Associated Press story from Charleston, W.Va., appeared in The Herald-Mail. In the story, the Raleigh County sheriff says he won’t enforce any gun laws that Congress passes because he is charged with defending the entire Constitution.
“Everybody, and I mean everybody, has an inherent right to be able to defend themselves. That is beyond written law. That’s the law of nature,” the sheriff said. He also said that “five or six really loud morons” in Congress support outlawing certain weapons.
Perhaps the meaning and intent of outlawing certain weapons is not understood by a handful of West Virginia sheriffs. The gun being used by the president, which was shown on the weekend news, should be an indication that those who support gun control laws are not “loud morons” who want to take away all guns. We do not wish to take away the fun of sport or the ability to protect you or your family.
Pleasure for one group of citizens that wishes to own assault-type weapons cannot outweigh the value of others’ lives killed by these weapons. Killing 20 children and their teachers was a tragedy, but so are the daily murders on our streets and in our homes.
Do background checks. Increase the effort to recognize people with mental health problems. Educate proper use of firearms. But first remove the types of guns that have the capacity to kill and injure a mass number of people at once. While we hunt for the people who will potentially be harmful to others, we may save lives if the opportunity to purchase these weapons has been removed.
Lu Marletta
Hagerstown
Reader ‘shocked, sickened’ by Herald-Mail front-page ad
To the editor:
Have you and your advertising and marketing departments lost your minds? Is The Herald-Mail in such dire straits for ad revenue that you take money from www.helpmeshoot.com?
I am very disappointed and contemplating canceling my newspaper subscription. I was shocked and sickened to see the “sticker” ad on the front page of my Sunday, Feb. 3, newspaper. Maybe this ad has run before and I just missed seeing it, but in light of recent events nationally and locally, discretion would certainly be appreciated by this longtime Herald-Mail reader.
Amy E. Mason
Hagerstown
As a nation, we should learn from our history
To the editor:
A wise man once said, “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” I do not believe it is necessarily the conscious intent of our (elected) leaders to facilitate this process from a place of critical thought, but rather from a place of personal conviction.
Personal conviction, history has proved, has time and time again produced tyrants, maniacal and bent on the personal preposition of selfishness simply because the populace they have sworn to protect and serve has been silent. This silence originates from many points, but always ends in tragedy, some more defined than others. The silence of the populace is often preceded by times of great opulence, as well as times of great solace and statism which, as history has proven, digresses into a form of fascist oligarchy — and in the present age into a form of authoritarianism controlled by corporatism.
This process leads, as we see today in our country, to a system of outward governance best coined as ineptocracy, where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers. Not only our country, but our states, towns, cities, boroughs and hamlets are at a point of critical mass.
We arguably stand in the midst of the wealthiest and most opulent society which man has ever known, watching it fall like a giant as we gaze out of the vapor-thin bubble of apathy which is about to burst, crushing the liberties and freedoms that those who came before us fought and died to secure — never to return.
Jeremy C. Jones
Mercersburg, Pa.
Gun control does not mean taking away all guns
To the editor:
On Feb. 1, an Associated Press story from Charleston, W.Va., appeared in The Herald-Mail. In the story, the Raleigh County sheriff says he won’t enforce any gun laws that Congress passes because he is charged with defending the entire Constitution.
“Everybody, and I mean everybody, has an inherent right to be able to defend themselves. That is beyond written law. That’s the law of nature,” the sheriff said. He also said that “five or six really loud morons” in Congress support outlawing certain weapons.
Perhaps the meaning and intent of outlawing certain weapons is not understood by a handful of West Virginia sheriffs. The gun being used by the president, which was shown on the weekend news, should be an indication that those who support gun control laws are not “loud morons” who want to take away all guns. We do not wish to take away the fun of sport or the ability to protect you or your family.
Pleasure for one group of citizens that wishes to own assault-type weapons cannot outweigh the value of others’ lives killed by these weapons. Killing 20 children and their teachers was a tragedy, but so are the daily murders on our streets and in our homes.
Do background checks. Increase the effort to recognize people with mental health problems. Educate proper use of firearms. But first remove the types of guns that have the capacity to kill and injure a mass number of people at once. While we hunt for the people who will potentially be harmful to others, we may save lives if the opportunity to purchase these weapons has been removed.
Lu Marletta
Hagerstown
Reader ‘shocked, sickened’ by Herald-Mail front-page ad
To the editor:
Have you and your advertising and marketing departments lost your minds? Is The Herald-Mail in such dire straits for ad revenue that you take money from www.helpmeshoot.com?
I am very disappointed and contemplating canceling my newspaper subscription. I was shocked and sickened to see the “sticker” ad on the front page of my Sunday, Feb. 3, newspaper. Maybe this ad has run before and I just missed seeing it, but in light of recent events nationally and locally, discretion would certainly be appreciated by this longtime Herald-Mail reader.
Amy E. Mason
Hagerstown
As a nation, we should learn from our history
To the editor:
A wise man once said, “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” I do not believe it is necessarily the conscious intent of our (elected) leaders to facilitate this process from a place of critical thought, but rather from a place of personal conviction.
Personal conviction, history has proved, has time and time again produced tyrants, maniacal and bent on the personal preposition of selfishness simply because the populace they have sworn to protect and serve has been silent. This silence originates from many points, but always ends in tragedy, some more defined than others. The silence of the populace is often preceded by times of great opulence, as well as times of great solace and statism which, as history has proven, digresses into a form of fascist oligarchy — and in the present age into a form of authoritarianism controlled by corporatism.
This process leads, as we see today in our country, to a system of outward governance best coined as ineptocracy, where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers. Not only our country, but our states, towns, cities, boroughs and hamlets are at a point of critical mass.
We arguably stand in the midst of the wealthiest and most opulent society which man has ever known, watching it fall like a giant as we gaze out of the vapor-thin bubble of apathy which is about to burst, crushing the liberties and freedoms that those who came before us fought and died to secure — never to return.
Jeremy C. Jones
Mercersburg, Pa.
