Having a gun no guarantee of personal safety
With almost daily listings of shooting deaths in Atlanta, the total might well add up to qualify as a massacre.
Does taking them one at a time lessen their impact or importance, and thus only a story about a dispute over a spot in a parking lot or an angry remark in a checkout line?
How does having a personal gun guarantee anger control or personal safety? What can be the assurance of arrival at home unscathed for anyone just out on an errand?
To paraphrase a Quaker bumper sticker: Guns are not the answer.
MARY ELIZABETH ETHERIDGE, DECATUR
Don’t use volunteers to patrol schools or any other public places
A June 2 letter proposes enlisting volunteer parents “willing to submit to extensive background checks and firearms training.” Deploy them, it says, “outside their child’s school.”
Let’s stop and think about this. Imagine a parent making sure her 10-year-old daughter has everything she needs in her backpack. The mother then checks her own body armor and semi-automatic rifle so she’s ready to patrol the school grounds.
Do teachers want this for their students and families? As a career teacher, I say “No”! Especially when, as the letter claims, “we can easily prevent 18-year-olds from legally buying tactical weapons.”
Or should we also enlist volunteer shoppers to patrol grocery stores or medical patients to stand guard outside hospitals?
BILL BROWN, ATLANTA
Why crossover voting should be allowed in primary elections
Republicans concerned about crossover voting in the recent primary fail to acknowledge that there are those of us who actually research all candidates from all parties and vote for the best ones (in our opinion), notwithstanding the party affiliation.
In 50-plus years of voting, I have never down-voted a ballot (I joke that my ballot looks schizophrenic). While today I am aligned more with the Democrat positions, I voted for Brad Raffensperger because he has proven to me that he is the best possible Secretary of State, party affiliation notwithstanding.
He will likely have my vote in the general election, even if other Republican-seeking offices may not. Requiring voters to declare a party and not allowing for “crossover” in primaries is misguided.
NADEEN GREEN, ATLANTA
Biden to blame for high cost of fuel and utilities
Why are people, especially Democrats, moaning about the high cost of fuel and utilities?
After all, anyone listening to presidential candidate Joe Biden was repeatedly informed that he was going to do away with fossil fuels and, by the way, fuel costs would go up. The Democrat Party platform reflected this war on fossil fuels. Our nation could be energy independent, but because of Biden, it isn’t. So to blame Putin is a lie.
Democrat elitists fully expected and desired that increased costs would compel us to buy electric cars and arrays of solar panels. That is their professed goal.
As for those of you who are suffering from the tremendous costs involved, do you really think Democrat Party elitists actually care about you?
So, if you voted for Biden, you are simply reaping what you have sowed, and you deserve to suffer for your ignorance.
ERNEST WADE, LOGANVILLE
