Readers Write: Gun violence

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Is there some number where the enormity of savagery and loss will outweigh a fixation on personal rights? Is it 26, as in Sandy Hook? Is it 10, as in Buffalo? Is it 21, as in an elementary school in Texas?

What will it take for the defenders and enablers to drop their Kevlar vests of individual freedoms and feigned constitutional entitlements to recognize that the monster of personal armament is out of control?

We can cry for arming citizenry as protectors, but at what age? Should it be to arm the students to pack and carry along with reading and math books? Do we add this to the already impossible list of responsibilities of some teacher in a third-grade classroom or some band director?

We rely on our founders to have given us guidance as to constitutional rights, but they were not able to imagine this level of access to murderous weapons.

So, what is the tipping point — a body count, frequency, victims below some age — before we develop reasonable protections from our own perceived rights? When will the right to personal safety of ourselves and our loved ones outweigh the right to pull a trigger?

Steven M. Lukas, Minneapolis

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Can we finally put to rest the Republicans' tired old canard that we need good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns? The supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., and the elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., both had armed security guards nearby. The Texas gunman also fended off two armed police officers. Regular mass murder in our cinemas, grocery stores, schools, shopping centers, nightclubs, resorts, workplaces, etc., will continue to happen until the Republican Party values second-graders' lives and safety over the Second Amendment.

Louis Hoffman, Minneapolis

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Opponents of stricter gun control laws argue that banning the sale of assault weapons will place us on "a slippery slope." My God, don't they realize we are already on a "slippery slope," and that its consequences are far more damaging to the country than the "slope" they seek to avoid?

And what is keeping us from at the same time improving our mental health system? Certainly not money — we just authorized $40 billion for Ukraine.

Anyone with children who saw the faces on the grieving parents on the pages of the Star Tribune the past two days, or who watched the interview of the sobbing father of a murdered 10-year-old girl, could not help but feel the unimaginable loss these parents are suffering. In Wednesday's editorial, the Star Tribune concludes with these words: "There comes a time when a nation acknowledges that all violence is cause for a collective response" ("A school shooting. Yeah. Again."). Well, that time has come, and it is now.

Ronald Haskvitz, Golden Valley

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Brooke Rody, St. Paul

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Gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen apologized to his fellow GOPers for being on what he terms the "wrong side of the gun issue." I wonder if a visit to Uvalde for 21 funerals would help him to shift positions?

Dennis Nelson, Andover

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No, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, it wasn't the mental illness of the shooter that killed all those children. It was your mental illness and that of the senators who glad-hand out front while stirring the pot with their hind legs. It was their mental illness and yours that make you all not quite able to understand that the good of the country and the lives of its children are more important than your retaining power ... and that your staying in office by the power of the trigger is loathsome.

Pat Raftery, Faribault

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One of the strongest predictors of violence by a young man is absence of a father in the home. Can we strategize ways to prevent that?

Ross S. Olson, Richfield

When will we decide we've sacrificed enough innocent lives on the altar of the Second Amendment? It's time we take action to greatly restrict ammunition sales: require purchasers to have valid IDs, endure a waiting period, undergo a consultation/assessment by a medical professional and purchase only from providers who adhere to the strictest of regulations. Let detractors take suits through the courts if they like. Justice Samuel Alito won't find the words "bullet" and "ammunition" in the Constitution either.

Carla Steen, St. Paul

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In the aftermath of yet another mass shooting, this one targeting elementary school kids, it's important to once again remind Americans of a few certainties. It was not the gun but the man pulling the trigger that killed those children. He was probably a troubled and mentally disturbed man. And if the teachers and school personnel were armed, they'd have killed him before he got a chance to kill those children. Actually, the best thing we can do as a nation — and we all need to do something — is to pray for the families whose children were killed. Most important, for God's sake, don't politicize this tragedy. This, too, shall pass.

Ed Murphy, Minneapolis

Where are the rights of the dead children and adults? Where are the rights of their loving families? Where are the rights of all children to go to school without fear? Or the rights of any of us to feel safe anywhere in this "land of the free"?

But we are not free. We are held hostage to nearly unlimited access to and distribution of guns. Our founders' definition of freedom did not say the right to bear arms is unlimited to the extent that it allows taking away the most important rights— to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We actually are cowardly to allow the pretense that there are not ways to do better. We must stop making excuses that we can't prevent all gun deaths. We can more creatively take action. It starts with caring for one another.