Letters to the Editor — Guns and politicians, DART experience, scooters in Dallas

Gun violence solution lies in voting

Re: “Stop blaming mental illness — Until officials can admit guns to blame for mass shootings, solution will be elusive,” Monday editorial.

Thank you for your thoughtful and well-researched editorial on the “canard” of citing mental illness as the cause of mass shootings. I was with you right up until the last paragraph, where you say mass shootings will remain a national scourge until politicians deal with overly permissive gun laws.

Isn’t the real point that our current politicians will never challenge overly permissive gun laws? If they haven’t come around after the first 200 mass shootings in 2023, why would they after the next 200? Or the next 400?

In my opinion, the real lesson is that any officeholder who opposes new approaches to sensible gun restrictions needs to be voted out of office. This would put the burden where it needs to be: on every one of us.

This means that every voter needs to go into the polling booth with gun violence as their number one issue and vote that way. And newspapers need to stop recommending candidates who are on the wrong side of this issue, no matter what other admirable qualities they may have.

Only then will we see a material easing of our national scourge.

Miner Raymond, Waco

Society’s decline is to blame

It seems The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board along with several letter writers have chosen to blame the gun rather than the perpetrator for mass shootings. Enacting new gun laws may feel good and give politicians a sense that they’re really doing something important when in reality they will do very little to solve the problem.

As Pogo said in the cartoon “We have met the enemy and he is us.” If you have been around long enough, it’s not hard to observe the gradual decline in society. How have we become a society that resents authority from law enforcement to teachers and in many cases, a society that actually hates the country?

We have raised children who don’t know how to deal with adversity or with someone telling them no. Until we figure out how to deal with those issues, I doubt any real progress will be made.

Tracy Wallace, Richardson

Flaws in mental health excuse

Assuming I buy into the idea that our current rampant spree of gun violence is caused by mental health issues (which in part it is but not in total), I have two questions:

1. Why is any money ever pulled from mental health services? 2. Why are there no laws preventing people with definable, diagnosable mental health issues from getting guns?

I know I am not the first to ask these types of questions. But they need to be asked over and over until something is done.

Weber Baker, Farmers Branch

Make transit safe to use

My ride on DART after Sunday night’s performance of To Kill a Mockingbird showed me why people don’t feel safe using transit.

Ticketmaster warned of heavy traffic and asked people to arrive very early. We rode the train rather than sit in a line of cars at Fair Park. We arrived with time to spare.

But when we got on the train to go home, I felt like I was stepping into a different world. The train felt like a moving homeless shelter. One man dressed in a hospital gown with no shoes appeared to have escaped from Baylor Hospital. Another smoked on board. We were panhandled. Homeless people hung out at the stations.

This is a classic wicked problem: homelessness, lack of health care — including mental health care — and insufficient law enforcement combine to deter use of transit by choice. Add ubiquitous guns to the mix and it’s no wonder people stay in their cars.

Density and transit are crucial elements of our climate action portfolio. But safety is fundamental. If we want to scale up transit use to the level that climate change demands, we must address the health care and housing crises that make riders feel unsafe.

Ann Drumm, Dallas/Uptown

Scooters must be controlled

Re: “Follow that scooter data — 1,500 micromobility vehicles to hit Dallas streets despite a lack of safety information,” Monday editorial.

Dallas needs to get better signage on all the entrances to the Katy Trail so that these scooters will not run down walkers, runners, cyclists or people walking their dogs. There are no signs at Katy Trail Ice House, Knox Street and Airline Road, and the one at the entrance by American Airlines Center is so small there is no way a scooter rider will see it.

When scooters were here last time, they were completely out of control even though they were prohibited on the trail.

Scooter companies should be fined if they can’t put controls on them to stay off restricted areas, including the sidewalks downtown. I, for one, will not be going to restaurants or any events downtown after dark with fear of a scooter hitting my car after I’ve had a cocktail at dinner and then have to undergo a DWI test even though I’m not at fault.

I hope anyone injured by these scooters will not only sue the scooter companies but the City Council for not policing them better than they have in the past.

John D. Ward, Dallas/Turtle Creek

Don’t repeat 1913 mistake

I enjoy reading the “Today in History” feature and was struck by the entry for May 19, 1913. On that day, California Gov. Hiram Johnson signed the Webb-Hartley Law prohibiting “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning farm land. This was designed to target Asians, particularly Japanese.

Here we are, 110 years later, with our Legislature talking about doing the same thing, this time targeting the Chinese. How sad.

Joyce Thompson, Plano

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