Within minutes of the evil massacre in Connecticut, Michael Moore was tweeting the National Rife Association doesn't "want you to have the freedom to send your children to school & expect them to come home alive."
How despicable.
The responsibility for this tragedy does not lie with the NRA. The issue of whether citizens have a right to keep and bear arms under the Constitution is now black-letter law. The issue is what needs to be done in this context to protect citizens from madmen.
One would think, when such issues arise, we would look at what works. If you look at the wanton slaughters of individuals in this nation where more than three people were killed, the government had created a shooting gallery for the killers by requiring any of the citizens legally able to carry firearms be disarmed in the locations where the shootings took place.
This may have passed for reasonable legislation in the 1950s; clearly it does not work today. Israel encouraged its teachers to carry firearms, which reduced terrorist attacks against schools.
Yet, for example, here in Albany County, it is virtually impossible to get a carry permit.
When one of these incidents happens here in New York, and it will happen, the blood will not be on the hands of the NRA, which acts to protect our civil rights.
It will be due to those who insist that places of assembly be maintained as shooting galleries and those who refuse to grant solid citizens, with histories of gun ownership, the right to carry in public.
Gun bans can only lead to increased violent crimes because the killers will know that those who respect the law will not be armed. New York should choose wisely before it's too late.
KEVIN E. JONES
Albany