I thank Angelo Lynn, editor of the Addison Independent for his editorial of Oct. 5, 2017, “Fed up with lax gun laws? There is only one remedy…” There is only one remedy and, as Mr. Lynn correctly stated in his editorial, it is not our insipid Congress lining “up for NRA money and its political support at the next election.”
The remedy is us. To vote in new legislators on the state and federal levels is not enough. Who is to say, for instance, that these new legislators will also not become subservient to the NRA in their endless need for more campaign cash? At bottom, we have to change our system of campaign finances, otherwise we will still subject ourselves to the same shocking “disregard for public safety, the majority will, and common-sense” as Mr. Lynn phrased it, that we have now. This has made us all but subservient to the second amendment. It is why we cannot get a Medicare-for-all national health insurance, like every other democratic nation.
I write this from the perspective of a survivor of one of these shootings. Mine was a drive-by, long ago and in a different age, before the drive-by became fashionable and bump stocks and these other accessories came along to enhance the rate of fire power for any average shooter. I have also lost two friends (both women) to random shootings and almost lost a third (another woman, a high school friend) in Las Vegas. She made it. She tweeted: “You have no idea how horrifying and traumatic it is trying to plan your next move to safety.”
Until we find the moral and political courage to change our system of campaign financing, more and more of us will have to suddenly plan our “next move to safety.”
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier