In response to, “Why I wear orange,” by Nadia Jeelani on June 7.

In response to, “Why I wear orange,” Ms. Jeelani states the excuse that mental illness is the underlying cause of these massacres. While it does take a special kind of person to commit heinous wholesale murder of innocent people, mental illness is just a blanket excuse for bad behavior that use anything to kill others.

It is already against the law to kill, murder and/or maim another person. NO additional laws are going to stop criminals and their illegal behavior. If you listen, you would even hear the legislators say that.

See, criminals do criminal things, regardless of laws and this is the point of the citizenry being armed. Police cannot be every place and according ot a federal Supreme Court ruling, which says the police do NOT have a Constitutional duty to protect a person from harm. This ruling happened in June of 2005, which means you, Ms. Jeelani, were 13-years-old at the time of this decision. That is the problem with younger people trying to make decisions for “WE THE PEOPLE.” When they are not informed by an education of years beyond 18 years of existences or less.

What this Supreme Court’s ultimate decision meant, is that YOU are responsible for you and your loved ones protection.

By putting “no gun” signs on schools or any building just means the law-abiding citizens of this country go unarmed while those with criminal contempt for the law have guns. This is why you have mass shootings. You might consider that some day you may be in a life or death situation that you wished somebody with a gun was around.

You want to blame insanity? In one way, you are right, why do we continue to have “no gun” zones where people can be slaughtered in mass. It takes a good guy or lady with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun, whether a civilian or a police officer.

You mentioned Hadiya Pendleton killed in Chicago, which has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country.

Again, those laws only affect the law-abiding, NOT the criminals. Criminals will still get guns or make them or use some other weapon and attack in groups, if need be.

I think that you are misdirected in your approach to safety. Maybe you should consider your opinion while you are out and about do your marches with armed guards (police) keeping you safe during your marches. Do you not see the hypocrisy?

If you do not wan to own a gun, fine, that is your opinion, just leave the rest of us alone that wish to exercise our constitutional right to own guns.

Remember, also, that because of personal firearms at the founding of this country, we have all of our constitutionally protected rights that we enjoy today.

Paul K. Ingram Jr.
Batavia, Ohio