We cannot ignore lives lost due to abortion
In a recent editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal advocating that “Wisconsin’s old abortion law must go,” the authors saw “significant progress” in that abortion numbers in Wisconsin had “decreased from 20,819 in 1981 to 6,430 in 2020, according to the State Department of Health Services.”
If you break the 2020 abortions numbers further down that comes to approximately 123 per week, and just under 18 abortions performed on average each day in Wisconsin.
Just a few days before the WSJ editorial was published, 19 fourth-grade school children and two teachers were gunned down in Uvalde, Texas.
The late St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 “for her work for bringing help to suffering humanity.”
In part of her acceptance speech, she made the following statement: “But I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion because it is a direct killing.”
How can we rightfully mourn and be angered by the many mass shootings and loss of innocent human life taking place in our country and yet ignore the “legal” killing of innocent unborn children in the womb?
The first country to legalize abortion was the Soviet Union in 1920. What’s Russia doing today?
Patrick Hardyman
Blanchardville
A need for a conversion of hearts
The fundamental solution cannot be found in any particular abortion or gun law, mental health awareness, or the UN, though all may be helpful.
What we need, what I pray for, is conversion of hearts.
As a world, we have turned away from God. If only we were to turn back and allow God’s love back into our lives, we would uncover within ourselves what God put there from the very beginning: A deep love and respect for all life, beginning in the womb and continuing until we pass from this world.
Life at all stages is precious. Destroying life through abortion, mass shootings, and war goes against our very nature. It goes against the way God created us.
And so, the fundamental solution is to allow God back into our hearts, so that we may begin again to cherish life, and better work together to bring these senseless killings, in all their forms, to an end.
Jackie Schramm
St. Thomas Aquinas Parish
Madison
Some facts about guns
Dear Editor, following the recent mass shootings around the country, much discussion has followed concerning assault weapons.
I wish to provide some important facts regarding this term to help educate other misinformed souls, as I did for my wife.
An assault rifle is fully automatic, like a machine gun. Automatic firearms have been restricted from civilian ownership since 1934.
The modern sporting rifle, based on the AR-15 platform, is widely misunderstood. The AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. AR does not stand for “assault rifle” or “assault weapon”.
These rifles may cosmetically look like military rifles, but they do not function in the same way. They fire like other civilian sporting firearms, firing only one round with each pull of the trigger.
They can be configured to many different size calibers, from 22 to shotgun, similar to all sporting rifles.
These rifles are used for many different types of hunting, from varmint to big game. They are used for target shooting in national matches.
They are no more powerful than other hunting rifles of the same caliber.
I agree that mass shootings are cause for concern for all of us. However, I feel that banning murderous, lethal video games would have a greater impact and provide more protection than banning sporting rifles.
Nick Ringelstetter
Prairie du Sac