Mr. Williams responded to the My Point of View column and asked a few questions and raised a few concerns. Here are the answers.

He found it curious I didn’t mention the victims were LGBT. He is correct. I didn’t mention that because it didn’t matter to me. They were humans with families. Gay, straight, black, white, young or old; it didn’t matter. They were innocent.

Mr. Williams claims there was no organized terrorist connections. False. The shooter called 911 multiple times and claimed ISIS affiliation.

My point of view is the weapon choice didn’t matter.  This incident it was a .223-caliber rifle and a 9 mm pistol.  Boston Marathon was a pressure cooker, 9/11 was box cutters and airplanes, Fort Hood shooter used a .357 Magnum revolver, ammonium nitrate fertilizer was used in Oklahoma City. Guns are illegal in France, yet we still saw attacks in Paris and later in Belgium. Chicago is a “gun-free” city, but somehow has the highest incident of shooting crimes. Criminals and terrorist don’t follow gun laws.

Mr. Williams also asked about my support of Mr. Trump’s comments, which Mr. Williams described as an isolationist view. To be honest, I can’t keep up with all of Mr. Trump’s verbal thoughts.  I will let the comment that I asked to be remembered from the article be remembered:

“Terrorism is created by people who hate. We didn’t create that hate. Something they learned taught them to hate, often their misunderstanding of the teaching of their religion was taken advantage of, and turned for evil.”

I agree that often compromise is important to create a working government. But I refuse to believe compromising with terrorists by giving up our guaranteed rights is a solution.

Let all of us, regardless of political party identification root for less hate in this world.

 

Brian Hensley

Albert Lea