RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Shoot-first response is part of gun culture

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Thanks for your eloquent letter recently published in the July 2 edition of the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus about the killing of Joseph Fortunati.

I could add yet another case to your dossier of such shoot-first killings by police officers who have been forewarned that the person they have been called in to confront is mentally deranged. The nephew of a dear friend of ours in Maine was killed in just such circumstances a few years ago. The family had called the police because the young man had become threatening. The family had dealt with him successfully before when he was in that state, and this time they made the mistake of calling for "professional" help. The young man was shot out of hand by the police, and the family has ever since rued their decision to call on them for help.

I think that, high and low in America, we are afflicted with the culture of the gun, far too often preferring gun-speak to diplomacy. A current outstanding expression of that preference, writ large, is our disastrous action in Iraq.

Jules Rabin

Marshfield