THE ARTS
Response to "How this game is played"Opinion, Dec. 23
There is another game in town. It has star players, and competition from other cities. It produces income for the region; trains young players; improves Atlanta’s ability to attract highly skilled businesses and people to the area, and promotes business development around its site. This team racks up a perfect season.
It also needs a new place to play to keep its best players, managers and coaches from joining other teams, and to bring in more revenue. These incredibly skilled players and coaches inspire and train younger players to be winners, and those attending, to be more eager to improve. This team has a national and international reputation.
This game is music. The team is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
SUE S. WILLIAMS, ATLANTA
STUDENT SAFETY
Armed staffers, locks
could secure schools
I’d like to see legislation, either federal or on the state level, that promises a tax credit to any retired or off-duty military or law enforcement officer who promises and certifies that he or she will carry a concealed weapon whenever possible. It does not need to be a huge credit, and it would be totally impossible to verify compliance — but remember, these are people have already taken an oath to defend our laws and Constitution and are trained and dedicated.
Schools could be made infinitely safer for not much money. All classroom doors could be equipped with bullet-proof windows and automatic locking systems, so that they can only be opened from the outside with a key and from the inside with a panic bar. Each school could then recruit a staff member who takes firearm safety courses, learns marksmanship skills and gets a concealed carry permit.
This person would need to be anonymous to all but the chief administrator — but I’m guessing there is someone in every school in the country who would gladly accept this role.
EARL HIDER, SNELLVILLE
NEWTOWN SHOOTINGS
It’s mental illness, not
type of firearm used
I do not own any guns — particularly any of the so-called “assault” weapons — but I am so angry over the media’s continuous attention to the premise that the particular type of firearm used in the tragic Newtown shootings is the root of the problem.
It is not the type of weapon used, but the fact that a deranged person was able to get a weapon with ammunition and use it. What arguments would you be hearing today on TV or the radio if the shooter had used a commonly found pump-action shotgun and a common handgun? He may have killed a few less children, but would that tragedy be any less a tragedy if only 15 children had been brutally murdered?
This debate, so much anchored in the evil of “assault” weapons, to me is not just inane; it is detrimental to making substantive progress to making the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy unlikely to ever occur again. The attention given to “assault” weapons is diverting our energy away from the real problem. We’ve got to get this dialogue off the kind of weapons used and onto the problem of identifying mentally disturbed individuals, getting them the treatment they need, and preventing their access to any kind of weapon.
ED TECZA, DULUTH
CONGRESS
Cut waste instead of
going after taxpayers
Why is it that when Congress spends tax dollars on indescribable waste, and dispenses precious funds far beyond what has been appropriated in its budget, the solution is to continually engage in the next war on taxpayers?
And why, in our current political debate, should these new taxes be extracted by discriminating against the wealthier among us? Penalizing them for their accomplishments is today’s war on the financially successful (I write this as a simple middle-class guy).
ALAN FOSTER, ACWORTH
