House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks as House Democrats discuss gun policies at the East Front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
Alex Wong/Getty ImagesWe facegrief and outrageyet again about the fatal school shooting in Nashville. And yet, why are we not as outraged at Marty Daniel, who ownsDaniel Defense, one of the leading makers of the AR-15 killing machine, as we are with the Sackler family, whose company pushedOxycontin, causing much of the tragic addiction across the country?
How is the Daniel family not held liable for the blood on their hands?
And why are we not outraged that a majority of Americans support more gun safety rules and yet our politicians ignore us?
Why do we focus on the social media crisis that is damaging our kids (with legislation proposed in some states), yet we don’t do anything about gun violence, the leading cause of childhood mortality?
We hold the United States in such high regard and yet it is truly puzzling why we are the only country in the world that is completely unable to act on the gun crisis.
Kristin Johnson, Oakland
Get new pins
You have to wonder if those craven, cynical, calculating Congress persons will leave their tinyassault rifle lapel pinsoff their jackets for a few days.
Mary Minton, Sonoma
Stereotypes run deep
Regarding“Ethnic studies classes made me less racist. Can they do the same for California high schoolers?”(Opinion, SFChronicle.com, March 25): Reading this reminded me of an occurrence in my social studies classroom at Presidio Middle School in the late ’80s that illustrates the need for ethnic studies even earlier than high school.
The discussion involved Manifest Destiny when a bright eighth-grade girl declared that ethnicity-based unfairness seemed to be the norm, that there was nothing a “Chinese kid,” such as herself, could do about it in the near term and that for practical purposes, racism had to accepted and worked around if one wanted a modicum of success.
The reality of the insidious and seamless inculcation of racism came when to make a point, she gestured toward a new kid in class who was one of the only blonde, white kids at Presidio, emphasizing, “Yeah, but he’s an American!”
It took the rest of the period to gently unpack with them the irony of the statement since I was fully aware that her family had been in San Francisco since the 19th century and that the new kid, unbeknownst to her, was a recent Russian immigrant who couldn’t quite follow the discussion in English. Yet he was seen by his predominantly second- and third-generation Chinese classmates as being the real American.
We have a lot of work to do yet if we aspire to equity and true equality, and long-overdue ethnic studies requirements in our public schools are an important component.
Michael Bickford, Arcata, Humboldt County
Can’t work with new D.A.
For the past 27 years, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has published a manual, “California Criminal Investigation,” which explained the rules that law enforcement officers must follow in the course of their investigations. It’s a complex field of constitutional and state law, and it covers all facets, including searches, seizures and interrogations.
With over 600 pages, the manual is unique because it has no agenda other than to provide its readers with accurate information based on the published opinions of the California and federal appellate courts.
的作家和编辑手动27years and as an Alameda County prosecutor for the past 45 years, it was apparent that I could not work for the newly elected District Attorney Pamela Price. So, like many ofmy colleagues, I quit.
What’s going to happen to California Criminal Investigation? Obviously, it cannot survive in the hands of any agenda-driven district attorney; especially one who believes that, generally speaking, officers and prosecutors are thugs and that we would all feel much safer if more criminals were roaming the streets instead of locked in prison.
It’s even more disturbing that the voters of Alameda County apparently agree with this.
Mark Hutchins, Alameda
