To the editor: Centuries in the past, Pope Harmless II banned using the then-new crossbow towards Christians, sadly limiting its use to non-Christians solely. What we want in the present day is a pronouncement from all of our most extremely positioned non secular leaders to denounce the manufacture, sale and buy of any and all firearms (“Pope Leo requires finish to ‘pandemic of arms’ as he prays for victims of Minnesota college capturing,” Aug. 31).
Pope Francis was right: The firearms business is a “service provider of demise,” empowered by all who facilitate it, and the political management that’s within the hip pocket of this business are its salesmen.
Ken Johnson, Santa Barbara
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To the editor: After I learn the report of Pope Leo XIV’s pained phrases, “Allow us to plead God to cease the pandemic of arms, massive and small, which infects our world,” different phrases instantly got here to thoughts. Particularly, John F. Kennedy’s at his inaugural tackle: “Asking His blessing and His assist, however realizing that right here on Earth, God’s work should actually be our personal.”
Bob Wieting, Simi Valley
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To the editor: The Los Angeles Occasions reported that an El Dorado County fireplace captain has been charged with two counts of murder: his girlfriend and her son, a second-grader — the primary in anger, the second to get rid of a witness (“Cal Hearth captain fatally shot his girlfriend, then killed her son to cowl it up, prosecutors say,” Aug. 27). For each college capturing on this nation, there are dozens, if not a whole bunch, of shootings like this one. Somebody, overwhelmingly male, with poor anger and impulse management, shoots and kills different folks. Two weeks earlier, in Brooklyn, N.Y., a capturing erupted in a nightclub that killed three folks and wounded 9, mirroring the type of carnage we simply noticed in Minneapolis.
Younger males go into leisure locations armed, simply in case their rivals present up armed. A fireplace captain has a gun at dwelling, simply in case his girlfriend (or whoever) ticks him off.
This isn’t about AR-15-style “weapons of struggle.” That is about availability and angle; 340 million folks, 400 million weapons and a complete lot of psychologically and socially maladjusted folks. That is the nation we now inhabit and the nation the Supreme Court docket, in its doubtful knowledge, has enabled and blessed.
Mitch Paradise, Los Angeles
