Letters to the Editor | March 30, 2023

How many more school shootings is it going to take before Congress has enough of a conscience to do the right thing and ban assault rifles? I realize that the NRA wields a lot of power, but the incidence of school shootings in America has become unprecedented, and it must stop. No other country in the world has as many shootings as the U.S. It’s because guns are too accessible and get into the wrong hands. If treatment for mental illness was more available and affordable, I feel that perhaps there would be less gun violence, too. I implore Congress to speedily pass legislation that will eliminate these weapons and reduce the opportunity for guns to get into the wrong hands and inflict trauma or death onto innocent victims.

Jodi Stern, Cherry Hill

We’re sorry we keep allowing this to happen to you. You see, in this country, gun rights are more important than protecting lives. But never fear, some of us are working hard to ban books and make life harder for transgender and gay students. We promise to keep your eyes safe from ever seeing great works of art and learning about Rosa Parks. As for gun violence, we feel it’s necessary to not infringe on the rights of anyone who wants/needs to carry a gun. We also must thank our leaders who feel that the money they receive from the NRA supersedes your right to go to school without fear. Unfortunately, you are just going to have to get used to being collateral damage in a country that believes that the more guns, the better. We know that more children die every year due to gun violence, and those numbers keep going up, which means more of you are going to die. Please don’t be mad at us. Maybe if you make it to voting age, you can do something about it. Until then, you are stuck with adults’ willingness to sacrifice our children. The only thing we can offer you right now are our thoughts and prayers.

C. Fogarty, Schwenksville

As a scientist who has paid attention to climate change, I have become deeply worried about the future of our planet. Burning fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a strong greenhouse gas, to already unprecedented levels, and growth continues. This has already warmed the whole planet. As a direct result, storms are growing in intensity, glaciers all around the world are vanishing, and the Thwaites ice shelf in the antarctic is seriously threatened. Melting at these latter sites threatens to raise sea levels disastrously. Against the warnings that science has been urgently delivering, the Heritage Foundation’s Derrick Morgan (“The case against electric vehicles”) notes the well-known current disadvantages of electric vehicles vs. internal combustion engine vehicles, and rails against “bureaucrats in distant capitals” for mandating their phase out. His op-ed simply glosses over the existential climate issues we face. Such willful ignorance is leading us to a very bad place, even as governments (those bureaucrats) are not meeting their climate action promises. If we don’t up our tempo on these issues, it’s quite clear from the science that we will pay dearly.

Ed Devinney, Delanco

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