After the horrific massacre in Connecticut, it is natural that people will have a powerful emotional response. Virtually everyone wants to find a way to prevent this from ever happening again.

So what do we get from our president and the other anti-gun leaders? A demand for immediate dialogue to promote their government-control agenda and restrict the rights of citizens to protect themselves and nothing to immediately protect our children and most vulnerable. I submit they are focused more on their own misguided agenda than the real issue: safety for our children.

The only leaders I have heard that had an idea that would be of real and immediate value to that end are Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association and locally, Oregon Rep. Dennis Richardson, who both called for immediately putting trained, armed guards in our schools.

If you removed the Second Amendment from the constitution and banned production and sales of all guns in the U.S., and if you went further and tried to confiscate all guns, it would never succeed in making a gun-free society. There are too many out there and they can be smuggled in and made underground. The time involved to pass the legislation would be weeks and months. The attempt to remove alcohol from the country proved it won’t work. Have the dialogue, but put immediate safety measures with far less controversy in place first, if you really care about the children and not your political agenda.

Harvey Lathrop

Bend