To the editor: The NRA has become the problem

Lydia Ringer, 16, a junior at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, holds a sign that reads "NRA - Not Right for America," as she attends a rally against gun violence at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash.

The NRA is not the Second Amendment. The NRA is not sportsmen. The NRA is not personal protection. The NRA was once a group that parents and children could join to support the safe enjoyment of the sport of hunting.

It is no longer an innocent family association. It is no longer about family safety. It has become a powerful and vile interest group, and it should be changed or abandoned. The NRA is no longer solving problems, it now is the problem.

LARRY ROSENBERG
Barcelona Drive

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People kill people

The difference between an assault rifle and a defense rifle is not the characteristics of the rifle — it’s the characteristics of shooter.

JIM BOEHM
Drummond Road

Thoughts and prayers

One thing that is universal during and after every tragic school shooting is the students, parents, teachers, the school district, and nearly everyone prays. Something that, strangely, has not been allowed in any public school building since the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Engel vs. Vitale.

How ironic is that?

JACK SNYDER
Erie, Michigan

Common sense media control

The recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla., has brought out the predictable cries for gun control, even though most studies show that none of the proposals, had they been law, would have prevented the massacre. My proposal is different: We need common sense “media control.”

It’s a fact that many of the mass shooters want to be remembered as being the deadliest or the worst of the worst. It’s unlikely that the press can restrain themselves, so it’s time for a law that says that no news organization, including those on the Internet, can reveal the shooter’s name. Instead, they should refer to him as “The Deranged Loser”.

There will be some First Amendment absolutists who will object to limitations on the press, but I see that as no different than those Second Amendment folks who wish to see their favorite amendment left intact.

Perhaps the prohibition on reporting of the actual name could just have a reasonable waiting period. A 30 or 60 day delay would allow the would-be copycats to cool off.

It’s time we have a national conversation on my most reasonable ideas.

JIM DUNMYER
Temperance, Michigan

We must stop future carnage

One thing was glaringly missing from Keith Burris’ Feb. 25 column, “Do something,” which was a call for banning the AR-15.

No politician or NRA member can explain its need because there is none. We citizens have a Congress, seduced by power, that is running our country over a cliff. The children, who are our future, are being killed in increasing numbers as our Congressmen watch their investments rise and their pockets fill with NRA money.

I can only hope that the movement started by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will grow as all citizens join them with “not prayers and thoughts, but action.” I can only hope that my grandchildren don’t become part of future carnage.

KATHY MOCKENSTURM
Hampsford Circle

Good women have abortions

Good women have abortions. Women of all faiths have abortions, including Catholic women in the Toledo diocese.

Despite the views of Bishop Daniel Thomas, the decision by ProMedica to agree to treat patients transferred from any ambulatory surgical facility is both logical and in keeping with their mission. If ProMedica had not signed the agreement, they could have found themselves treating patients who had sought out unsafe alternatives to legal abortion care.

Transfer agreements are a medically-unnecessary trap that John Kasich enacted to attempt to close abortion clinics; but even with an agreement, the clinic is still responsible for providing care. No doctor, hospital, or health care administrator asked for Ohio’s transfer agreement to be created. A signed transfer agreement simply means that health care professionals are not going to be used by politicians in a plan to deny women care.

When a woman makes a decision to terminate a pregnancy, she deserves the right to make that choice in consultation with her family and her physician. No one has a right to block her from the options she knows is right for her — especially not John Kasich.

KELLIE COPELAND
Cleveland, Ohio

Editor’s note: Kellie Copeland is the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio.

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