Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this
postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to
mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.
RECEIVED Wed., Dec. 26, 2012
Dear Editor:
Where has the day gone when parents would walk their kids to the bus stop and be free not to worry until the bus brought them home? When kids could go to school and be able to learn how to stand up to a bullies without wondering if their holsters were empty? What has happened to a country where we worry about how much or what kind of gun you can carry and no longer the motive or the why as to how someone could decide to extinguish life in the manner that happened at Sandy Hook Elementary?
If I could write this without question, I would; however, what is scary is that I myself do not know the answers. Something has to really snap or go wrong for someone to decide to murder innocent children, even more so someone so young himself. How does it make sense to send your kid to school with a weapon when the issue is that weapons are being brought to school?
This world is changing, and fast. Part of this new world is that we need to change with it. I don't see how anyone could see it as a positive change if children would now be bringing their snub-nosed .38s in their lunchboxes instead of notes packed by mom and dad; and worse still, if teachers would be armed to snuff out life rather than to teach the beauty to prevent this sort of massacre.
The world is defiantly changing, and if I change with it, I don't wish these jaded, perfunctory ideologies to be a part of my own.
With deep condolences to Monroe, surrounding Connecticut, and Northeast Coast,
Awbrey A. Collins
Elgin
RECEIVED Fri., Dec. 21, 2012
Dear Editor,
Re: “
Point Austin: Guns 'R' Us” [News, Dec. 21], it stands to reason that the senior news editor would have a bully pulpit from which to espouse the decidedly liberal philosophy of your publication. But as a longtime Austin resident and avid reader, I know well the leftish leanings of the
Chronicle, and though I do not always agree with this stance and think there should occasionally be a more moderate voice offered equal time, I am not writing with that in mind. Rather, I am interested in two salient points.
First, when it comes to the murder of innocents, be they elementary school children, theatregoers, Colorado high school students, or even football players' girlfriends, etc., no rational person could ever disagree that such tragedies were made easier by the proliferation of guns. And in the aftermath of unexplainable tragedy, people are always ready to jump aboard the gun-banning ship.
However, that same rational person would also be hard-pressed to disagree that when the demons that drive people to homicide takeover, it is unlikely that the absence of a gun would change their minds. Disturbed and evil minds will always find a way (see Timothy McVeigh), and even if guns
were banned, no one should be so deluded as to think that guns would then be immediately unavailable to them, as well.
Secondly, I do think that someone as erudite as Mr. King surely must be able to express intelligent opinion regarding gun control without insults, name-calling, and innuendo. Not everyone who owns a gun is "gun-crazed," nor is every gun owner inviting murder by having guns in the home.
Finally, I am sure that Rep. Louie Gohmert holds no such fantasies of Rambo principals, and he certainly does not deserve to be called a lunatic. Name-calling is little more than the last refuge of the uneducated and vocabulary-deficient.
Bill Wilson
[Michael King replies: Two brief responses to Bill Wilson's "salient points": 1) In purpose or planning, Adam Lanza was no Timothy McVeigh, and if Lanza had not had ready and easy access to multiple weapons, he would not have been able to do what he did; 2) I quoted Louie Gohmert's explicit Rambo fantasy: "I wish to God [the principal] had had an M4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids." If Wilson chooses to wish it away, it's his willful blindness, just as he's free to ignore the rest of Gohmert's persistent political lunacy. Finally, I never suggested all gun owners are "gun-crazed"; it's the gun-crazy minority that is holding the rest of us hostage to a suicidal version of the Second Amendment under which any sane regulation is anathema, and the only answer to gun crimes is more guns. Responsible gun owners have a vested interest in ending that insanity.]
RECEIVED Fri., Dec. 21, 2012
Dear Editor,
Were y'all as stunned as I was by the bald-faced admission that the Circuit of the Americas is a welfare queen? At least that's what I took away from the “
Quote of the Week” [Dec. 21] ascribed to Richard Suttle, in seeking state funding for events at COTA: "Without some sort of public assistance, these events don't work." So I'm now waiting to hear if Rick Perry will go on record that everyone connected with COTA must pass a drug test before they can get any more welfare payments. As if. Really, why doesn't Perry just drop all pretenses and go ahead and put on a clown suit?
Now the apologists for corporate welfare will tell us, "But these events bring so much revenue to the community because people who come into town for them spend lots of money here!" But if that's a legitimate argument for such welfare payments, then doesn't that apply equally well to what these folks would no doubt think is "welfare" – various forms of assistance to the not-so-well-off? Isn't pretty much
all of that money also spent in the communities where the recipients are located, boosting their economies? And don't such payments benefit society in ways at least as beneficial as what really comes down to nothing but luxury entertainment?
But no, that just doesn't seem to compute to the corporatists that hold the reins of power in this state and country. Welfare, it seems, is assistance given to people they like to look down upon. Assistance to the well-connected and well-off is an "incentive.” But if that's the case, how then to make sense of what Suttle said? How can it be an incentive if COTA can't get by without it? An "incentive" to locate here so that we can keep on giving them more and more "incentives" so they can continue to subsist? Sure sounds like welfare to me. And given how COTA types strut around in their high-dollar vehicles – yes, some of them perhaps Cadillacs – doesn't that make them the very definition of welfare queens?
Best regards,
David Venhuizen