Dear Editor,
We as a community and as a nation should be bothered more by those who have a bigger problem with the discussion of gun control than they do the lives of innocent children, people who pray in the way the Constitution also protects our right to do … and people simply going about their daily business of grocery shopping.
I’m appalled by those who would sidestep the call for common-sense sense gun control legislation, especially on behalf of the members of the Key West City Commission in a resolution letting our national leadership know we stand for their approval and action toward protecting people as they shop and worship, and children in the place they should be safest aside from their home, their schools!
It bothers me immensely that these people will ignore the call for such sensibility in favor of more guns, bulletproof backpacks etc., rather than the meat of the issue: Guns in the hands of those who should not have them. In fact they frequently point to mental health, arming teachers, making our schools more like prisons than institutions of learning and mental health, not as an additional action, but rather as the ONE action they believe should be taken.
I am just as concerned about those law enforcement officers who protect us on a daily basis, running up on someone, who has more firepower in their immediate possession, as I am about the folks praying in their church, synagogue or mosque, grocery shopping, children going to school etc. I come from a family with generations of decorated law enforcement officers, including my deceased youngest brother. I, too, am a gun owner, although I would not own a high-powered killing machine as those used so often in these absurd acts of death.
Finally, if it’s true that all politics is local, then our citizenry has a right to know where we locally elected officials stand on these issues of national importance. Sandy Hook, Columbine, Uvalde and others are small, fairly isolated communities — as is ours. Were we not to take a stand THEN is when we would have failed our responsibility.
Demanding on the local level that something be done by those who have the power to do so in higher elected office, is as much our responsibility as any local ordinance. Not doing so would have been a dereliction of our duty.
Sincerely,
Clayton Lopez
Key West City Commissioner, District 6
