What is going on in this country with guns?

What is going on in this country?

Here’s my reaction to the San Jose, California mass shooting ["Sheriff: Gunman targeted some," News, May 28]. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This is the Second Amendment to the Constitution. This one sentence has been interpreted and reinterpreted over two centuries. The interpretation I learned growing up, and later taught, is that in order to protect a state’s freedom and security, the people of that state have the right to keep and bear arms when serving as part of a "well-regulated militia."

What the Congress has allowed — and now states are beginning to allow — is for the Second Amendment to be a license for anyone to own weapons never before imagined that deprive innocents of their right to life.

The men and women in Congress can’t participate in verbal disagreement without violent language. It seems we can’t settle disagreements without physical violence, taking away the lives of others. The governor of California just asked this poignant question: What is wrong with this country?

When will my right to live without fear of random acts of violence be valued more highly than the right of an individual to carry a gun?

Indeed, what is going on in this country?

Laura L. Lustbader, Huntington Station

Editor’s note: The writer taught American history in private alternate secondary schools for 20 years.

I’m a Republican for the first time

I just became a Republican. In hindsight, I probably should have done this five or six years ago ["A reality check for NY Republicans," Opinion, May 18]. My excuse is that I had been an independent voter my entire life; politics is not in my DNA. Sometimes I vote for Democrats, sometimes Republicans. I always liked the idea of a two-party system in which I can see bipartisan representative support on broadly important issues and informed dissent on others.

So why is it that I reregistered with the Nassau County Board of Elections last month and, for the first time, listed myself as a Republican? In a word, "balance." In one small way, by setting myself up as a target for Republican pollsters and voting in Republican primaries — albeit too late for the 2021 primaries — maybe I can help restore some balance to the Grand Old Party. If others would join me as a Republican for a few critical years, perhaps I can again become an independent by the end of the decade.

Winston Himsworth, Plandome