Social ills, not guns, are source of our problem

So long as we persist in addressing gun control as the "poster boy" for these horrible mass shootings and ignore the decline of society's mores, little, if any progress will be made against them.

With morality, such as it is, being taught not at home but at school, where instructions bow to whomever funds them, mores have sunk to an all-time low. Permissiveness rules the day, and we are now observing this phenomenon almost weekly.

Our most vulnerable and precious assets are paying the price of institutional ineptness; yet, rather than admit their lack of ability to manage morality, they point their collective fingers at the tools used to wreak havoc and mayhem, and then they scream loudly.

We the people have allowed this tragedy to unfold, and we the people can, and must, fix it at the polls, community gatherings and school conferences. Firearms have been a fact of life for centuries, but only recently have they been so wrongly used. Who is using them, and why now, after centuries of idleness?

Having them available to all, by constitutional writ, is why we are still free, and not under a dictatorship. Do we wish to give up that freedom?

It's not the chisel's fault it cuts through wood, it's made to do just that. But the chisel does nothing on its own.

Jim Ledbetter Sr.

North Aurora