Dear Los Alamos School Board
Copy, E. Schmidt, LA Monitor, LA Daily Post
Although the front page article in the Sunday, 9 March LA Monitor indicates
a proper level of skepticism by the School Board to Mr. Langenbrunner's broad
anti-gun proposals, I would like to state that as a taxpayer and voter, I do not
think that the School Board is the proper venue for setting public policy that
goes far beyond the school board's legitimate areas of expertise or governance,
i.e., the controls on and accessibility to firearms within our
schools.
The proper place for a discussion about gun control, including ideas on
background checks and the role of semiautomatic weapons in public hands, lies
with our State and Federal legislatures, not school boards. Should the Board,
speaking for our schools, take an overly broad stand on such subjects, one can
probably surmise that future school board elections will be contested not on the
basis of good education policy, but instead be contested on the basis of gun
control platforms. I don't think I need to remind anyone what a potentially
polarizing issue this could be, especially if handled badly. Indeed, using
student safety as a Trojan Horse for an attack on firearms rights is not only
bad politics, but blatantly dishonest. This is, after all, Los Alamos, not Inner
City Chicago.
I also suspect this is another tired attempt to move the annual gun show
out of Pueblo Complex. Do we really need to fight that battle of style over substance yet again?
Individual Board members, to be sure, are entitled to state their opinions
on the subject of gun control as individual citizens. Indeed, I hope you do so.
