To the Editor:
Re “Armed. And Ready to Teach Kindergarten” (entrance web page, July 31):
As each a guardian of school-age youngsters and an American citizen with commonsense values, I’m deeply disturbed via this text. Creating a college speedy reaction power of ill-trained and in all probability underprepared and timid academics, directors and janitors to do what just about 400 cops armed with automated high-capacity rifles may just no longer do in Uvalde turns out relatively farcical and inaccurate.
It’s as though the proverbial “good guy with a gun” is now the brand new tactic being deployed to behave the place skilled officers so blatantly and tragically failed.
Evidence displays that a hit results from such techniques in mass taking pictures occasions are extraordinarily uncommon. And so, another time we forget about the elephant within the room (masses of thousands and thousands of weapons, lax gun rules, the N.R.A. foyer) and as an alternative of legislating safeguards for the blameless, we meekly and quietly give a instructor a 24-hour certification and a Glock, which until it’s within the palms of knowledgeable guns handler turns into necessarily a pea shooter towards a maniac armed with an automated rifle.
Insane gun rules that let such common mass shootings at the moment are being cloaked in silly and poorly concept out “solutions” on this as soon as nice nation.
Timothy Paynter
Media, Pa.
To the Editor:
As a retired fundamental college instructor, I felt a mix of disbelief and horror after studying this text! What is improper with our nation that makes it appropriate for academics to hold and most likely use a loaded weapon?
Classrooms are puts the place the surroundings must be secure and at ease for finding out. Will having educators in a position to shoot create the ambience that we wish for our kids?
Barbara Segal
Berkeley, Calif.
To the Editor:
Rather than terrified academics feeling pressured to discover ways to deal with a gun for their very own protection and the security of the kids of their care, why don’t academics merely refuse to visit college till those semiautomatic rifles are utterly banned and stale the streets?
Teachers taught over Zoom all through one plague; they may be able to do it once more all through this present plague.
Lisbeth S. Fried
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Giving firearms to civilians with minimum coaching and enjoy is a national crisis within the making. The lives of our kids, younger adults, academics and directors deserve a extra considerate, cautious reaction to the epidemic of college shootings. Not reckless, shoot-from-the-hip insurance policies.
Victor Caliman
Kings Park, N.Y.
The author is a former instructor and main.
Analyzing Russia, and the Man Who Runs It
To the Editor:
Re “Putin Performs for Russia, and Ukraine Is the Stage,” via Peter Pomerantsev (Sunday Opinion, July 31):
Mr. Pomerantsev’s superb research of President Vladimir Putin’s manipulation of the Russian “cycle of humiliation and aggression” jogs my memory of the Russian people pronouncing “Never carry garbage outside the hut.”
The Russians won’t ever recognize or memorialize their self-inflicted ache as a result of they do not want to give their disasters and shortcomings to the outdoor global. Russians imagine that doing so would possibility permitting foreigners to take advantage of such vulnerabilities.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the ultimate Soviet chief, stays vilified in Russian society for his adoption of glasnost, which might have allowed public debate and scrutiny of Russian disasters over time and which the traditionalists adversarial.
Melvin A. Goodman
Bethesda, Md.
The author, a former C.I.A. Russia analyst, is a senior fellow on the Center for International Policy in Washington and an accessory professor at Johns Hopkins University.
To the Editor:
When will the media label Vladimir Putin as who he’s: the Twenty first-century Hitler? The quicker the easier, since that identity may just achieve the Russian voters who’re being propagandized.
C.J. Hoppin
Peaks Island, Maine
Republican Governors: A Look on the Record
To the Editor:
In “Republican Governors Are Quietly Delivering Results” (Sunday Opinion, July 31), Liz Mair makes an attempt to turn out Republican competence via cherry-picking financial knowledge that she says choose Republican-run states. But Democrats may just in a similar fashion level to knowledge to enhance Democratic-government competence.
Just one instance: Of the states with the perfect charges of Covid deaths, the highest six are led via Republican governors.
Gubernatorial effectiveness is measured via much more than only a few cherry-picked knowledge.
Richie Feder
Philadelphia
To the Editor:
This essay items an enchanting distinction with an Upshot article the day prior to, “Ragged Safety Net Is Weaker in States That Ban Abortion.” Three of the Republican governors of whom Liz Mair is maximum complimentary — Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey and Asa Hutchinson — preside over states that experience a few of the worst data within the nation on such things as kid poverty and maternal mortality.
Has the associated fee paid for the decrease taxes and different insurance policies they have got carried out been value it?
Ellen S. Hirsch
New York
To the Editor:
Re “‘The Final Straw’: Flooding Washes Away Kentucky Coal Country Stalwarts” (information article, Aug. 5):
Reading this tale about Kentuckians is heart-wrenching. Living this tale should be past heartbreaking. The loss of life, the destruction and the loss of assets are a dwelling nightmare.
It is insidious that the coal manufacturing that adversely affected folks’s well being and the encircling geographical region contributed to an volatile local weather that reasons such heavy rains and severe flooding. Unfortunately, those local weather occasions will proceed to destabilize communities if international warming is left to fester.
Lives and livelihoods want rescuing in jap Kentucky. Beyond the cleanup, those other folks want jobs, housing, clinical products and services and just right faculties. Land broken via coal mining must be rescued.
Our fellow Americans want lend a hand, and we as a country wish to solution their name. And we wish to go regulation to mitigate the local weather disaster. We have so much on our plate, however we will be able to do that!
Sally Courtright
Albany, N.Y.
The author is a retired science instructor.
Mixed Martial Arts: This Is a ‘Sport’?
To the Editor:
Re “The Fight Doctors” (Science Times, Aug. 2):
In opposing the growth of combined martial arts, Senator John McCain — hardly ever the squeamish kind — described their bouts because the identical of “human cockfighting.” The present ubiquity of this “sport” is but any other signpost within the ethical decline of our society.
Doug Brin
Brooklyn
