To the Editor:

I heard a rumor the other day: Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) were enlisting the support of Members of Congress to institute a new approach to battle the scourge of drunk driving. The foundational theme of the new program is to make it more difficult for all people to obtain drivers licenses and, of course, ultimately, to make it illegal for everyone to drive. To actually outlaw cars. You see, since so many people are killed each year as a result of drunk driving it’s only common sense to reduce and ultimately eliminate the cause of all the destruction and human suffering: the cars!

This is possibly the only fact in the current mass shootings debate that both sides can agree on: that what we’re doing, isn’t working to stop the madness. Not even close.

Here’s one humble suggestion to solve the problem of mass shootings:

*Stop the attack on our constitutional rights to lawfully keep and bear arms.

*Form a single action group tasked with the job of solving the mass shooting problem in the country comprised of both ideological camps.

*Make it a foundational principal of the group that nothing can be advanced by the group as a whole that’s opposed by others on the group.

*Cease and desist any further efforts to institute more restrictive legislation, beyond current case law, to make it more difficult for people to exercise their constitutional rights to defend themselves

*Adopt Rep Tim Murphy’s of PA proposed legislation to institute a federal mental health program to spot and treat those amongst us who have given clues that they’re dangerous and need help and/or control.

*Adopt and pass federal legislation to own and operate guns in the country similar to our driving laws recognized across all state lines.

*Adopt a national public relations program akin to previous programs about pollution; smoking; see something, say something; etc for Americans to recognize and treat dangerous people before they act.

*Federalize all gun crime within the jurisdiction of the FBI. Establish federal sentencing regulations that punish crimes committed with guns and, then, establish local sentencing for such crimes after the federal sentences have been served.

*Abolish the killing fields/gun-free school zones and institute training programs for teachers and administrative personnel who wish to carry concealed weapons. Stop advertising to deranged, mass killers that here are their targets.

*Stop advertising the name of mass shooters and pass a law to retroactively eliminate their names from all public registers, birth, marriage, etc.

Let’s band together as a community with a program similar to this to show the country and the world that we here in Newtown really do want to actually mitigate the problem of mass shootings.

Let’s be uniters who stop the divisive politics that only serves to continue the killing of the most precious and defenseless amongst us, our children.

Respectfully submitted,

Peter McLoughlin

Pleasant Hill Road, Newtown      October 7, 2015