Beyond the voters themselves

Friday’s opinion article regarding the gun-control debate in Washington vexed me deeply (“Closing the Trust Gap,” April 19). Though never directly referencing it, the author seemed to dance around the fact that the United States Senate recently failed to pass universal background check legislation. He faults “the voters themselves” for no longer fervently supporting gun-control measures. But in his analysis, the author misreads public sentiment and fails to account for the distortion power of well-funded lobbyists like the NRA that undermine our democracy by creating laws completely at odds with public opinion.

Over 90 percent of Americans believe in universal background checks. In fact, before this debate, most believed it was already the law. The American people are not to blame for the Senate’s failed leadership on this issue. The blame falls squarely on Wayne LaPierre, the out-of-touch leadership of the NRA and a cowardly group of senators too afraid of the gun lobby’s big money to pass common-sense reform that “the voters themselves” supported in droves.

Tyler Blackmon

April 21

The author is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards College.

A cop in the best sense

With the tragic murder of an MIT campus police officer on Thursday night, it is an appropriate time to again recognize the work of the men and women who serve and protect not only the Yale campus but the streets of New Haven. I suspect that there are few day-to-day jobs in the city as stressful and dangerous as the traffic stops that these people do among their many responsibilities.

If their families and friends share one thing, it is relief when one of their own comes home at the end of the shift.

It is heartbreaking that the same won’t exist for those close to the cop who was killed without warning — like his fellows at Yale, he wasn’t just a campus policeman, he was a cop in the best sense and he was on the job.

John Bennett

April 19

The author is an employee of Yale University Libraries.