Dear Editor:
The following is a response to Congressman Luetkemeyer's article from Jan. 26. Luetkemeyer says he is watching out for us, but to me that is simply untrue. In my view the congressman is a lot more worried about being primaried or not getting a committee chairmanship than the welfare of the citizens of his district.
Like a lemming, Luetkemeyer follows John Boehner, Frank Luntz and the party line instead of thinking for himself. I do not claim to be a constitutional scholar, but I don't believe that any of President Obama's executive orders offend the Second Amendment; rather, they strengthen it. Their basic theme is to make sure the laws we currently have in place do their job making sure that background checks get done such that they are useful to law enforcement, submitting an individual for the ATF for Senate confirmation, authorizing the CDC to study gun violence in our country, and clarifying some aspects of ACA so that those with mental illness get help.
Now I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I much prefer my tax dollars being spent here at home trying to help those returning veterans suffering from PTSD, and identifying those that are mentally ill so the get the help they need, rather than paying private contractors overseas gargantuan amounts. Perhaps we can help a few souls off the ledge, so to speak, and pay for a few less swanky hotel rooms for generals and their wives.
Congressman Luetkemeyer's recent submission shows he will not give any real attention to gun safety. What I read in Saturday's article was lip service, an "I'll make overtures and dance politely around this issue, but I'm not going to put any serious effort into it."
I guess we Missourians will have to wait until the pigeons come home to roost.
We'll have to have some serious tragedy right here in our own district before Congressman Luetkemeyer takes this issue seriously, because losing those young children in Newtown, the moviegoers in Aurora, and the dead and injured in Tuson and more just aren't enough for our congressman to put serious effort into this horrible epidemic. He's far more worried about his political future than that which has been extinguished from those we've lost.
We can do better and perhaps at election time we will.