To the Editor:
Re “Assailing Hate, but Not Guns” (front page, Aug. 6):
Shame on The New York Times for your original front-page headline (later changed) for Tuesday’s paper: “Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism”! Mr. Trump did nothing of the kind, and The Times’s editors and reporters know that only too well.
The president sullenly read a script that had all the right words, without any indication of feeling or belief in the words he was saying. His recitation was that of a schoolyard bully making an apology to one of his victims using words the principal had made him say.
Paul Vandevert
Dearborn, Mich.
To the Editor:
I applaud President Trump’s suggestion that we need to start policing the proliferation of hate on social media. I suggest that we start by deactivating the source of so much of the discord and vitriol plaguing our political discourse: his Twitter account.
Michael Scott
San Francisco
To the Editor:
I find it both regrettable and unsettling that so many of President Trump’s foes on the left and in the liberal media rushed to assign direct blame for the shootings on Mr. Trump, repeatedly calling him a racist.
Far too many people are using race as a political cudgel to bludgeon their opponents. Especially in today’s highly polarized political environment, recklessly ascribing the “racist” label to one’s political enemies is not only irresponsible, but also needlessly inflammatory. To blithely accuse someone of racism without actually knowing what’s in the person’s heart is not only politics at its very worst, it’s humanity at its very worst.
In the future, we would all do well to remember that when people play the race card, everyone gets dealt a losing hand.
Michael J. DiStefano
Jamestown, R.I.
To the Editor:
I briefly visited El Paso a couple of weeks ago and took it upon myself to query people I encountered — the shuttle driver, fellow riders, hotel employees — about how they felt about the wall and Mexican migrants. Granted, this is anecdotal, but my consensus was that the white folks in El Paso were against a wall and had no disdain for Mexican immigrants.
“Mexicans are not lazy” and “the closer you get to the border the less afraid you are” came from an older white man.
It’s heartbreaking that an out-of-town domestic terrorist caused such harm to this city and its basically peaceful state. Abstract fear of others stoked by our president is creating dangerous men. We need our leaders to quell fear, not inflame it.
El Paso was called a “center of the migrant crisis” by The Times. The people who live in El Paso did not seem to feel this way, but now they certainly do.
Lisa Schiller
New York
To the Editor:
A voluntary nationwide school boycott demanding that Congress enact strong gun control legislation would, I believe, force government action. Parents across the country have a right to expect that the schools they send their children to will be safe. No legislation, no students!
Matthew M. Lind
Houston
To the Editor:
I happened to fly into London on March 13, 1996, the day of the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, in which 16 children and their teacher were shot to death by a lone gunman — still the most deadly mass shooting in British history. The following year John Major’s conservative government passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act, virtually banning handguns. Tony Blair’s government strengthened the act soon thereafter.
More recently, following the murder of 51 people in the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand, the government took less than a month to ban semiautomatic weapons.
Countries in which conscience is allowed to prevail over profit have succeeded in enacting meaningful gun control, but in the United States, the murders of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School — and all the atrocities before and since — have failed to stiffen the slack spines of a majority of our legislators. I despair of the verdict on this past weekend’s killings being any different.
Tony Misch
San Jose, Calif.
Source: Read Full Article
Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Race, Guns, Vitriol and Violence
Opinion | Race, Guns, Vitriol and Violence
To the Editor:
Re “Assailing Hate, but Not Guns” (front page, Aug. 6):
Shame on The New York Times for your original front-page headline (later changed) for Tuesday’s paper: “Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism”! Mr. Trump did nothing of the kind, and The Times’s editors and reporters know that only too well.
The president sullenly read a script that had all the right words, without any indication of feeling or belief in the words he was saying. His recitation was that of a schoolyard bully making an apology to one of his victims using words the principal had made him say.
Paul Vandevert
Dearborn, Mich.
To the Editor:
I applaud President Trump’s suggestion that we need to start policing the proliferation of hate on social media. I suggest that we start by deactivating the source of so much of the discord and vitriol plaguing our political discourse: his Twitter account.
Michael Scott
San Francisco
To the Editor:
I find it both regrettable and unsettling that so many of President Trump’s foes on the left and in the liberal media rushed to assign direct blame for the shootings on Mr. Trump, repeatedly calling him a racist.
Far too many people are using race as a political cudgel to bludgeon their opponents. Especially in today’s highly polarized political environment, recklessly ascribing the “racist” label to one’s political enemies is not only irresponsible, but also needlessly inflammatory. To blithely accuse someone of racism without actually knowing what’s in the person’s heart is not only politics at its very worst, it’s humanity at its very worst.
In the future, we would all do well to remember that when people play the race card, everyone gets dealt a losing hand.
Michael J. DiStefano
Jamestown, R.I.
To the Editor:
I briefly visited El Paso a couple of weeks ago and took it upon myself to query people I encountered — the shuttle driver, fellow riders, hotel employees — about how they felt about the wall and Mexican migrants. Granted, this is anecdotal, but my consensus was that the white folks in El Paso were against a wall and had no disdain for Mexican immigrants.
“Mexicans are not lazy” and “the closer you get to the border the less afraid you are” came from an older white man.
It’s heartbreaking that an out-of-town domestic terrorist caused such harm to this city and its basically peaceful state. Abstract fear of others stoked by our president is creating dangerous men. We need our leaders to quell fear, not inflame it.
El Paso was called a “center of the migrant crisis” by The Times. The people who live in El Paso did not seem to feel this way, but now they certainly do.
Lisa Schiller
New York
To the Editor:
A voluntary nationwide school boycott demanding that Congress enact strong gun control legislation would, I believe, force government action. Parents across the country have a right to expect that the schools they send their children to will be safe. No legislation, no students!
Matthew M. Lind
Houston
To the Editor:
I happened to fly into London on March 13, 1996, the day of the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, in which 16 children and their teacher were shot to death by a lone gunman — still the most deadly mass shooting in British history. The following year John Major’s conservative government passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act, virtually banning handguns. Tony Blair’s government strengthened the act soon thereafter.
More recently, following the murder of 51 people in the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand, the government took less than a month to ban semiautomatic weapons.
Countries in which conscience is allowed to prevail over profit have succeeded in enacting meaningful gun control, but in the United States, the murders of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School — and all the atrocities before and since — have failed to stiffen the slack spines of a majority of our legislators. I despair of the verdict on this past weekend’s killings being any different.
Tony Misch
San Jose, Calif.
Source: Read Full Article