Letter from the President

Preventing Gun Violence

March 2013

Let’s be clear, The Reporters Inc. isn’t going to provide any definitive answers when it comes to this extraordinarily contentious, divisive, and complex issue. Finding common ground and compromise is difficult, if not impossible.

But this month, we do offer three distinct and very compelling views (below) about the subject.

For my “Letter from the President” I thought about writing about growing up with a police officer (my stepfather), and a hunter (my grandfather), and how I learned to both fear and respect the guns they used.

I thought about detailing a few of the many horrific homicides I’ve covered over the years, committed with guns. I thought about sharing my recollections of an evidentiary video I watched during the trial of a young man who opened fire in a northern California high school in the early 1990s. He killed one teacher and three students, and wounded nine others. The video showed images of the knocked-over desks, of the strewn papers and books and pencils, of the blood-stained floors, and of the four dead bodies.

There will be no trial in connection with the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy. And as a result, there will never — thankfully — be a video shown in court there, like the one that will forever haunt me.

WIth that, I hand the floor over to our passionate and incisive guest columnists.

Let this very important and very necessary discussion continue.

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