Lois Eisenberg (letters, Oct. 2) asks, “What is America’s excuse?” but her piece leaves out key realities. Yes, school shootings are a tragic problem, but solutions require more than slogans and comparisons.
She points to Britain’s lack of school shootings since 1996 as proof that strict gun laws are the answer. The comparison doesn’t hold. The U.S. is not Britain or Australia — our federal system, constitutional protections, sheer size, cultural diversity, and long gun tradition make the situations very different. And unlike those countries, America already has more than 400 million firearms in circulation. That reality matters.
She dismisses the Second Amendment as outdated because it was written in the age of muskets. But constitutional rights don’t disappear with technology. Free speech wasn’t erased by the internet, and the Fourth Amendment didn’t vanish with smartphones. The right to bear arms has to be interpreted in modern terms, and Supreme Court rulings — from District of Columbia v. Heller to New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen — make clear that regulations must fit constitutional tests.
Her claim that restricting access is the only solution oversimplifies the problem. Gun violence is rooted in many factors: enforcement, background checks, mental health, safe storage and community breakdown. Focusing only on gun laws while brushing aside the rest ignores how real change happens.
She’s right that teachers don’t want to be armed, and that “a good guy with a gun” isn’t a cure-all. But serious proposals don’t expect every teacher to carry. They focus on trained school resource officers and security staff. Treating the extreme example as the whole debate misrepresents the issue.
And while she mentions mental health and culture, she treats them as secondary. Yet nearly every mass shooting grows out of deep psychological or social breakdowns. Ignoring that means repeating the cycle even if laws change.
America doesn’t need an excuse. It needs layered solutions that respect constitutional limits and address the full picture — not quick comparisons to other countries.
Nancy Fairbanks
Valencia
