Echoes from Texas- crosses at Sutherland

More memorial crosses, thoughts and prayers but no changes in gun regulations or improvements to mental health care.

Another in my "echoes" series - re-blogs of letters to the editor (LTEs) found while cruising the opinion pages of randomly picked national newspapers. This echo from the Houston Chronicle:

Sutherland Springs church shooting victims of mass murder by gun violence

Fire power

Regarding "Mental health" (Page A14, Thursday), one reader wrote that "improving the nation's mental health care would be more useful than new gun laws." He conveniently ignores the fact that the Republicans killed legislation that would have prevented those with a mental health record from obtaining firearms. They won't even agree to ban firearms purchases by those on the federal air travel watch list!

And while 40 Democrats have co-sponsored legislation to ban the bump stocks that allowed the Las Vegas shooter to turn his semi-automatic weapons into virtual automatics, not one Republican has supported them.
Finally, the Sutherland Springs shooter reportedly left behind 15 empty 30-round magazines. He was able to fire off at least 450 rounds in minutes because Republicans have allowed not only assault-style weapons to be for sale to the general public, but high-capacity magazines as well.

Our family owns multiple firearms and enjoys target shooting and hunting but made the argument with friends and fellow hunters decades ago that there was no reason on earth that kind of firepower should be available to anyone that wants it. 

We're certain the writers of our Constitution in the era of single-shot black-powder firearms never envisioned the proliferation of firearms such as we see today when they added the Second Amendment. And even that amendment includes the phrase "well regulated."

David Kelly, Spring Texas