I was very surprised at the honesty of the headline on your Feb. 21-27 editorial, but then someone pointed out to me that “Another Assault on Common Sense” probably wasn’t referring to the content of your editorial. My mistake.
Since I was wrong about that, maybe I don’t understand the cartoon either. As I understand it, a deranged individual murdered 17 people in a school in Florida; many of that person’s peers “knew” that he was dangerous, but apparently did not mention that to school authorities until after the shooting; school authorities considered him dangerous, but did not go to police; police made dozens of visits to his house, but two investigators concluded that he was not a danger to himself or others; the adults with whom he was living did not notice the aberrant behavior that so many others saw; the FBI was "unable to identify" him as the author of a post indicating he wanted to be a school shooter, and when the FBI received two separate tips actually naming him as dangerous and threatening to become a school shooter, the Bureau ignored one, and failed to send the second to the local Field Office for action, and when he became the school shooter he said that he wanted to be, the Broward County deputy on duty at the school failed to do his duty and remained outside the building where the shooting was taking place, where he was joined by other Broward deputies who also did not enter the building – and so the NRA was responsible for the atrocity.
I must not have been paying attention in Logic Class.
H. M. Padon
Great Falls