The right to bear arms is non-negotiable
Ellen Portnoy’s commentary on gun control could not be any more misguided. If she had gotten the facts right I would be more amenable to her position.
In her first paragraph she indicates that the murderer in The J incident was “a sick and demented man.” {mprestriction ids="1,3"}That should have been the byline and context of her commentary. Mental health is the true issue at hand, not guns.
She goes on to that her deceased friend’s nephew said she would want “us to do something about the gun problem in the United States.” I fail to see the connection between how a mental illness crisis in our country has anything to do with guns.
Does she not understand that guns are inanimate objects? Guns themselves cannot chose between acts of good and evil. We all know this but many fail to want to address the fact that mental illness has failed to be addressed by our leaders regardless of party. We talk about women’s health as a topic of today when in fact mental illness is a greater crisis and need, but that is a topic for another day.
As far as her discussion about our founding fathers and their understanding that guns today could be beyond their imagined capabilities, that is not a reasonable point of view. I prefer to look beyond the constitution and to our Torah. Why does our Torah address weapons and violence when there were no guns in those times; because all men have the capacity to do harm to others regardless of the tools of harm.
Last, her understanding of guns laws is completely inaccurate. You cannot purchase a weapon in Kansas without a background check unless it is a private sale between two individuals, or it is given as a gift. Felons cannot own firearms as well.
Guns are a critical part of our free society. To live in a country where the citizen’s freedom is insured, the citizens must not be limited in their ability to stave off threats to their freedom. Our founders knew that freedom is so precious that a country must allow its free people to defend their freedom.
Guns and the rights of citizens to bear arms is non-negotiable.
Robert Cutler
Leawood, Kansas
Not our problem
I guess all Semites have chutzpah. That is the only way to explain how Arab Americans can have the gall to ask Jews for help with the Syrian refugee problem. This is not a European or American crisis, it is a Muslim crisis, easily solved by Muslims. Israel, a tiny country of 6 million, with no natural resources and a disproportionately burdensome military budget, managed to accommodate a million Russian Jewish immigrants — with no Muslim aid, I might add. Why don’t the Muslims do the same thing for their co-religionists?
The oil-rich Muslim Middle East contains hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square miles of land. Surely Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi-Arabia, the Emirates, and Iran can absorb them. Instead of perilous journeys across seas and lands, the refugees and migrants should be able to easily settle into the region that is already culturally and linguistically familiar to them, as opposed to demanding entry into Europe and America.
Europe has already seen what happens with an influx of Muslims. They do not assimilate. They are violent and aggressive in demanding that their hosts cater to their wishes, and they draw down huge sums in welfare, while using their best efforts to change the very culture of the countries they occupy.
The kumbaya naivety of those Jews who would spend our resources on these immigrants is astonishing. If the Muslim world, with all its wealth and land, lacks the compassion to take care of its own, why should we, particularly since Arabs in general seem to want us all dead? The supreme irony would be when we find that terrorists having infiltrated with these migrants, we ourselves bought and paid for their tickets to America.
Lee Levin
Overland Park, Kansas{/mprestriction}