Since the elementary school shootings Friday in Newtown, Conn., The Star has received more than 100 locally written letters to the editor dealing with the tragedy.

We all are to blame

Every one of us owns some guilt of the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary because we have not taken up the challenge to stop violence as a form of entertainment.

Movies, music and video games have made killing fun and entertaining. Especially video games, where many people spend hours on end killing everything that moves on a screen, desensitizing themselves to killing and seeing blood and guts.

I can’t help but think that because video games are getting more and more violent and realistic, some will blur the line between reality and gaming. Some of us can manage it; others clearly can’t. We don’t really know what hours of killing in video games can train a mixed-up mind to do.

You’d think Columbine and other massacres would have been eye-openers. But no, we close our eyes, turn our heads and get on with our lives instead of doing something about it.

Stop the violence.

Cindy Dueringer

Lenexa

Guns, tragic Christmas

Twenty-six people killed; 20 are children. Even though it has nothing to do with honest hunters, it makes for an absolutely horrible Christmas.

The National Rifle Association and our gutless politicians sadly have showered us with these grotesque “gifts” for years.

Verne Christensen

Olathe

Sensible laws

If all of us who are mothers of schoolchildren banded together, we would be stronger than the National Rifle Association and would be able to get some sensible gun laws enacted.

Write a letter today to your congressperson.

Let’s stop this madness. No one needs military-type assault weapons to protect his family.

Julie Whitley

Olathe

Guns protect children

Here we go again with the liberals grasping another opportunity to scream from the rooftops, “Guns must go.” Did you ever hear of anything so stupid?

Legal or illegal, people will defend themselves. Did they ever think that schools are a target because they don’t shoot back? Even a rent-a-cop would make one think twice when he sees the uniform and sidearm.

Our government protects politicians. Why not schoolchildren?

Don Airington

Kansas City

Time for a change

I am 62 years old.

I own many guns.

I am a member of the NRA.

I am retired military.

I am a Republican.

I am a sportsman.

I vote.

I have had enough of gun violence.

It is time for a change.

I also have a suggested first step: that high-capacity magazines be made illegal, that it be a felony to own one. That way, if a person decides he wants to own a high-capacity magazine he risks his right to own a gun (felons cannot own guns).

The previous ban on high-capacity magazines was a joke, easily skirted and resulting in a loss of respect for the law.

This is not the answer, but this would be a start that signals the resolve of our leadership to make a change.

I have talked to my friends (all multiple-gun owners), and they also believe it is time to act. One of them suggested a federal buy-back program for high-capacity magazines.

Democracy without discipline is chaos.

Kerry Grigsby

Overland Park

Mental health solution

Let’s not pin all the blame for the Sandy Hook school massacre solely on gun ownership. When President Barack Obama said “meaningful action” was needed, he didn’t say it was gun control. I believe he was hoping for creative solutions, not the same old shibboleths.

But the anti-gun folks are using his call to action to bolster their case for the elimination of guns.

The mental health services system is also at fault. The nation must find a way to remove psychotic people who are a danger to themselves and others from society before they act out their deadly goals. Simply denying mentally ill people guns won’t work. That train has already left the station.

There are far too many guns too easily obtainable despite whatever government controls can be applied. Rather, the removal of dangerous psychotics from society should be our goal, despite our well-intentioned desires to protect their individual liberties. That tactic has produced a homeless problem of dysfunctional people on the streets.

Let’s open our eyes to the fact that mentally ill potential shooters need to be pre-empted before they wreak their evil carnage on the defenseless.

David Warren

Leawood

Faith’s answer

Concerning the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, all of the major networks are asking guest ministers from different faith backgrounds, “Where is God in all of this?” Their answers always revolve around free will and our choice to do good or evil.

However, long ago, I was taught by the Jesuits that the mind of God is “unfathomable.” The first minister who will answer the question about God’s presence by simply saying, “I don’t know” will gain my complete respect. I’m tired of all the bloviating.

Thomas J. Moran

Belton

Gun violence control

In the aftermath of the Newtown school massacre, the letters and commentators rise up again, focusing on gun control and the NRA.

It seems that I have never known the NRA to advocate for gun violence. But I do recall a lot of guns being used against humans on TV, in the movies and video games.

Who do you think puts more screwed-up ideas in crazy people’s heads, the NRA or the entertainment industry?

Terry Yake

Overland Park

Justice system woes

The lunatic fringe against the Second Amendment, including but not limited to the U.S. president, a U.S. senator, Boston and New York mayors, and lib-media types such as an editor and columnist of The Kansas City Star, are now railing for more gun control laws and restrictions.

I suggest they wake up and seriously consider reported facts about the named shooter in Newtown, Conn., Adam Lanza was a criminal — a thief and murderer and most likely a trespasser before even starting the carnage at the school.

This 20-year-old stole his mother’s weapons and slew her.

Yet cries for more controls aimed at denying law-abiding Americans their constitutional rights grow more shrill by the minute. If laws meant something to criminals, they would not continually violate them.

I submit that laxness of the so-called justice system is a huge contributor to the growing criminal element among us.

For example, sentencing murderers and rapists proved guilty by DNA and other incontrovertible evidence to wrist slaps of prison time instead of execution lets them know they can wreak havoc on others and, if caught, be given medical care and room-and-board at taxpayer expense.

Capital punishment would certainly reduce recidivism.

Gary Lair

Odessa

A new town

We see the red lights, the ambulance glow

And we fight over who or what is to blame

And still we enable and refuse to let go

Reacting with rage and then acting the same

We play with the words like little tin soldiers

Set them up here and knock them down there

And wonder why hearts seem to grow ever colder

When the heat that we speak is just so much air

For children become what we teach them to be

They only reflect and learn what we shine

And to curse that reflection is hypocrisy

If we have just tied our hate to their time

We must seek in ourselves and try to remember

And teach what we know is right and is true

And pray that one day, in our own December

The children we love will remember it too.

Colin Gage

Kansas City

Woman’s perspective

What do mass shooters and the U.S. Congress have in common?

They are mostly males, and mostly white.

Since there are slightly more women (50.8 percent) in the U.S. than men, perhaps it is time that our governing bodies reflected that majority and we had a majority of women in both chambers.

Perhaps they would bring a different perspective to discussions of firearms than men have done.

And with a majority we might be able to accomplish something.

Janice Grebe

Roeland Park

Shooting children

Guns don’t kill people, gun owners do.

I do not give a darn about your right to own guns, I care about my family’s freedom to live safely in public.

Martha Liston

Kansas City