Minnesota shooting another wakeup call

The tragic shooting of children and other worshippers praying in a church at a Catholic school by a depressed, hateful trans female armed with weapons with hate messages on them after writing a manifesto full of hate directed at Jews, Blacks, Catholics, the LGTBQ community and others and glorifying other mass school shooters and posting on social media is an alarm on multiple fronts that require action.

We must act and do a better job on all of them. We have seen some progress on gun violence prevention in some states, but need more and comprehensive action at the federal level. We have some red flags laws and need more at all levels to get weapons out of the hands of people who are a threat to themselves and others, but we need more awareness education and enforcement to make them effective.

We need support for mental health programs, and families and friends need to act when they see signs of a problem. We have seen the vulnerability of schools and religious institutions and organizations, and we need more support for security grants and programs.

We have seen so much hate and prejudice spread on social media daily, and we need to stamp it out as best we can by standing up to it and supporting education programs to help, and getting government and private industry to do a better job on the proliferation on social media.

We have seen violence directed against politicians, and there needs to be support for security for all of them. On the political front, we all need to scrutinize candidates carefully and support and vote for candidates who are going to take action on all of these issues to help avoid more tragedies.

Elliott Hartstein

Northbrook

Election Day holiday?

With the Republicans wanting to end mail-in voting despite it having been around for over a century under the name “absentee ballots,” why don't they try making Election Day a Federal paid Holiday where everybody is to have the day off from work? Also make it illegal to penalize workers for missing or being late to work other than docking pay on Election Day if they present an “I voted” sticker?

That way, they can take the time off to go to the poll, which in some rural areas can be hours away, wait in line and cast their vote and be protected from losing their jobs for missing work.

So have everything be closed on Election Day like it is on Christmas Day so people can take the time to vote. Surely this is more important to have a day off than Inauguration Day where people can just listen on the radio or these days stream it to their workplace?

Mark Westergaard

Arlington Heights