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Wednesday letters: Gun safety, shootings, Supreme Court ruling

Republicans won’t act

Why can’t Republicans grasp the idea of gun safety? 

It was stunning how quickly the Australian government coalesced around gun safety in 1996, after 35 people were killed in one incident. Their new laws banned the sale and imports of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns; forced people to present a legitimate reason, and wait 28 days, to buy a firearm; then they held a massive, mandatory gun buyback. 

The government confiscated and destroyed 700,000 firearms, reducing the number of gun-owning households by half. In return, gun homicides fell 60%, and Australians have had to go through the agony of a mass murder just once in the 26 years since, compared to America’s 218 mass murders in the past 26 years. 



The obvious solution is to never vote Republican again.

John Hoffmann, Carbondale



Frightening

I find it truly frightening that nine Supreme Court Justices can implement the law of the land, superceding our votes and our democracy.

Michelle David, Glenwood Springs

Who’s the hypocrite?

A devout Roman Catholic friend of mine and I were discussing abortion at the hot springs pool. He thought it was the height of hypocrisy that someone who was pro choice would also be opposed to capital punishment.

My first argument was the death penalty is the premeditated taking of a living, breathing, independently functioning human being, however reprehensible that creature may be, while a fetus is none of the above. Then I gave him my view of hypocrisy.

“You’re a conservative, right?” I asked, “Perhaps a libertarian. Small government. Get the government out of my life. Yet you would have the government interfere with the most personal decision a woman would ever have to make.”

My friend doesn’t have a law degree, but other than that, he’d fit right in with conservative majority on the Supreme Court that has voided the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allows the states to outlaw abortion.

I’m old enough to remember pre-Roe, when terminating a pregnancy was illegal. They went on anyway in unsanitary conditions by unqualified abortionists. Women died. It’s like prohibition in the 1920s. You can’t stop it. Women aren’t going to go through full term with an unwanted pregnancy. The SCOTUS just made it more difficult and dangerous.

So it will be after Dobbs. Pregnant women will travel to other states like Colorado or a country like Mexico where complete obstetric care is legal. With the advent of abortion pills like misoprostol, women will be able to take care of it without leaving home. These pro-life states can’t keep drugs like fentanyl or methamphetamines out of their jurisdictions; how’re they going to prevent the flow of abortion drugs that’ll be coming?

The SCOTUS is a very undemocratic institution. The best way to beat them is at the ballot box. Democrats need to counter their tradition of low voter turnouts in the midterms and create substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. Then they could codify reproductive rights and not worry about the filibuster.

Fred Malo Jr., Carbondale

Boebert strikes again

It had been nearly a week since Boebert had uttered an offensive, inaccurate statement, so I thought it was time for this misguided individual to strike again. 

Boebert did not disappoint, saying the recent shooting in Denmark was proof that strict gun laws don’t work. What she didn’t say is that this was Denmark’s first mass shooting since 2015. 

For those of you who have Boebert signs in your yard, please inform this lady that on any given weekend in this country we have more mass shootings than Denmark has had in the last seven years.

David Ryan, Montrose


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