Dear Editor:
A letter to you from Brian Olson recently published in your paper caught my attention.
The opening sentence: "The Second Amendment and Thoughts and Prayers don’t seem to be working."
And then nothing to explain how these two are not working.
In what way is the Second Amendment not working? In what way are Thoughts and Prayers not working?
Is it the thought that they are they not working to stop mentally ill people from killing? If that's the thought, then one might also consider that neither were designed to do that.
(Of course, prayers supplicating the prevention of mentally ill people from killing would be so designed. But the prayers of "Thoughts and Prayers" mentioned here, I think all would agree, are about the victims, not the perpetrator, much less any mechanism used to inflict harm.)
If I am able to grasp the point from Mr. Olson's illogical, disjointed statement correctly, I suspect a cry for gun control. (I wonder what would Paul Harvey have to say about gun control?)
By this same line of reasoning, we should enact car control in light of the harm inflicted by drunk drivers, no?
Now, here is a case, if ever there was one, where going after root causes might be a worthwhile pursuit - as with drunk driving.
And as those root causes do not include the car in the one case, neither do they include the gun in the other. Is there disagreement on that point?
Sincerely,
Greg Carter, Wheatland
Carter was not a longtime anchor at KGWN-TV in Cheyenne
