The only response to the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre remarks is to ignore them. They add nothing to the dialogue. The majority of Americans, I believe, feel the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle has no place in our country.
The Bushmaster fires about three bullets a second. No hunter could use it, and it would be of little help as a self-protection tool. High-capacity magazines for this rifle and for any number of modern handguns are good for only one thing — killing of a prodigious scale.
Unfortunately, we have to leave sensible gun control policy to our politicians — a dicey situation at best.
There are things we can do immediately for our schools, things that do not need legislative action or a massive influx of cash, but things that will improve safety and will make parents feel a lot better:
Make sure all teachers and staff are trained and students drilled in proper crisis safety measures. It is clear that once the brave actions of the school principal and her colleagues alerted the building teachers and staff to implement their crisis training, they locked down their classrooms, pulled the shades, moved their kids to safe hiding places and stayed quiet until help arrived. This training and drilling saved lives.
Schools may need to upgrade classroom locks and the intercom system and develop an alert signal. Most schools already have a controlled and limited entry system in place. But those that don't need them immediately.
Kids are wonderful, resilient creatures. They are already experienced in fire drills and bus evacuation drills, so another drill won't faze them. After all, those of us who are old enough to remember those atomic bomb drills, when we all got under our desks, closed our eyes and wondered what it would feel like to be incinerated, managed to live though it.
Tony Wildman
Watervliet