government

To the editor:

The lack of uniform gun laws means that all of us are subject to a flood of weaponry purchased in the least restrictive states, in many cases without background checks on the buyers. This is inexcusable. There are uniform national and comprehensive federal background check procedures and data within the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), linked to the national terrorist watch and no-fly lists. We must enact uniform gun laws to take advantage of this and other critical information. As it stands now, unqualified buyers, including potential terrorists and the mentally ill, can freely buy guns at gun shows, on the Internet, and in retail stores in states with weak or nonexistent gun safety laws.

Warrant article 36 in our March 19 Town Meeting, which seeks endorsement of “A Petition to the U.S. Congress to Adopt a Uniform National Gun Safety Law,” encourages our federal elected officials to eliminate state-by-state differences that permit the spread of lethal weapons through illegal sales and trafficking. Let’s give ourselves a chance to enforce reasonable laws and keep weapons out of the hands of people we know should not have them.

Sincerely,

Peter Pease
40 Huckleberry Hill

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

To the editor:

Warrant Article 36 petitions Congress to enact “uniform national gun safety laws.” If such laws were enacted, it is likely that they would be significantly less restrictive than those of Massachusetts, and that Congress would invoke the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, thereby replacing Massachusetts gun laws with the weaker U.S. law. What a dream for the NRA; what a nightmare for Massachusetts.

Sincerely,

Michael R. Coppock
214 Aspen Circle

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

(Editor’s note: there are three candidates for two seats on the Planning Board at the town election later this month. Links to their letters are at the end of this post.)

To the editor:

I would like to offer my strong support for Steve Gladstone, candidate for the Planning Board.

Steve served with me recently on the Community Center Study Committee, where his insight and thoughtful decision-making was critical to our weekly committee work, our findings and our 2015 written report to the town. He is highly intelligent, polite, a real pleasure to work with, and cares deeply about our town and its cultural and physical landscape.  We are all fortunate that Steve is willing to serve on this very important town board, and I hope that you will join with me in supporting him.

Penny Billings (former selectman, chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals, and chair of the Community Center Study Committee)
Lincoln Road

Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

To the editor:

We have all been shocked at the horror of gun violence in America, shocked again at the refusal of Congress to enact responsible common sense gun safety regulations, and shocked a third time at the immoral resistance of the NRA leadership and the gun manufacturer’s lobby to any suggestion of more appropriate gun safety regulation even in the face of the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Warrant article 36 (see pg. 69 in the warrant) at the March 19 Town Meeting, which seeks support for “A Petition to the U S. Congress to Adopt a Uniform National Gun Safety Law Applying Equally to All States,” encourages our federal elected officials to pursue uniform national regulations to finally establish a more humane standard for gun safety applying equally to all states.

[Read more…] about Letter to the editor: support gun law resolution at Town Meeting