Sadly, school shootings are now ‘everyday America’
The March 28 headline in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution read, “School attack shocks Nashville.” This attack “shocked” no one. Possible emotions are despair, anger and disillusionment. But this is just everyday America.
The only shocking thing is that Americans continue to vote for senators and representatives who protect the NRA and not us. Commonsense gun legislation is decades overdue. All we get are thoughts and prayers, not action. This will continue until people vote for leaders who are willing to tackle this issue. Elections matter.
PAULA HUMER, JOHNS CREEK
Luckovich overlooks Democrats’ support for abortion
Mike Luckovich’s March 29 cartoon encourages us to vote based on what politicians hold dear — children or guns. The oversimplified and frankly repugnant implication is that Democrats cherish kids, and Republicans cherish guns.
How does Mr. Luckovich reconcile Democrats’ cherishing of kids with the party’s staunch support for abortion? Just in the U.S., abortion has prevented over 60 million from ever becoming kids.
DANA R. HERMANSON, MARIETTA
Senator uses school shooting to garner political favor
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., called for the “automatic death penalty” for school shooters. If Sen. Scott were stupid, we could just ignore this language. However, since Sen. Scott is not stupid or ignorant, he certainly knows that most school shooters kill themselves or are killed by police gunfire. He certainly also understands that the U.S. Constitution guarantees due process to every person accused of a crime.
Sen. Scott knows that there will not be an “automatic death sentence;” he also knows that his statement will garner political favor from many of his supporters. He is using the deaths of young children as political fodder.
That is truly disgusting.
LARRY AUERBACH, ATLANTA
Help struggling schools by helping communities they serve
Maureen Downey’s column on school vouchers that asserts legislators “ignore the reality that struggling schools mirror their struggling communities” resonated with me.
In 1972, I was the GDOE consultant for statewide testing. We were tasked with explaining why some schools performed poorer than others on standardized tests. We compared school composite scores based on the percentage of students in each school that were receiving free lunches.
Our premise was that high rates of students receiving free lunches would reflect the community’s poverty level and need for social supports. We surmised that these would be the schools whose test averages would be the lowest. The results, of course, confirmed our hypothesis.
Apparently, we were unable then and continue to struggle now to convince our legislators that the underlying causes of poor educational outcomes may be due not to inadequate teachers or schools but more probably to the support our state offers the children and families of Georgia outside of our school systems.
PETER C. THOMAS, PH.D., SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST, ATLANTA
Georgia should take the lead and indict Trump
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Georgia have an incredible opportunity and should take the lead to indict Donald Trump for blatant interfering with our election!
Many believe there’s no doubt Trump has committed offenses, ranging from withholding defense money to Ukraine to get information on Joe Biden’s son, to inciting a bloody revolution on our Capitol, to authorizing hush money to a porn star and somehow has been able to avoid indictments.
The question posed by many is whether or not our country should be spared the spectacle of an ex-president’s trial. On the contrary, our country needs to prove no one is above the law — not even a former president.
SUSAN HIGHSMITH GRAVELINE, PEACHTREE CORNERS
