To the Editor:

We're coming up, in December, on the fourth anniversary of that most horrible event in Sandy Hook and I just wanted to put out one, very simple statement about the progress made by progressive gun control groups.

It was agreed by all parties after the event that the single most contributing aspect of the entire holy mess was the fact that Mrs Lanza could not, after many years of trying, find a way to get mental health care for her son. Try as she might, she was unable to get this done for her son. Everyone who knew the family knew this was a giant, vexing problem. We all agree with this, right? The single mom was at her wits' end in trying to deal with a seriously mentally ill son. She had nowhere to go to find help.

After the massacre, some new groups started in Newtown, ostensibly formed to solve the mass shooting problem here in America. These progressive groups were above reproach. They were of the very highest moral and ethical intentions. If anyone disagreed with these groups' methods or objectives they were called out and shamed. And, if a business disagreed with them, it was economically targeted by these progressive groups, threatened with bankruptcy. These are facts and there's public record to substantiate these assertions.

So, just taking the single most-agreed-upon problem faced by Mrs Lanza, the inability to find mental health care for her deranged son, what's happened to our community's ability to obtain mental health care for our family and kids since December of 2012. Must be better now, right?

According to executives at Danbury and New Milford Hospitals, in 2011 patients on the average waited 30-40 days to get a spot in a state treatment center. Wanna guess what that wait is today? Are you sitting down? It's 100 days. Two to three times worse now than when it was virtually impossible back in 2012 to find help.

I could go on for pages with factual examples of the depraved indifference of progressives. The way they divide people. The same way our President lies, denies, and divides us, keeping us from actually solving tough social problems. Just imagine if President Johnson was a progressive. A Democrat working with a Republican House and Senate starting all those Great Society social programs. Never would have happened. Look at the way President Obama passed The Affordable Care Act and what's happening now to it: failure.

If progressives actually gave a hoot about solving the very real problem of mass shootings in America, they would have approached the "gun people," worked out a set of programs designed to honestly face the issue, and worked together with all Americans to solve it. Instead, they attacked the very folks most conversant with the issues and most motivated to actually solve the problem.

It is truly the progressive ideology at work. And, it's literally killing us.

Respectfully submitted,

Peter McLoughlin

26 Pleasant Hill Road, Newtown         August 30, 2016