Mailbag: School resource officer’s outfit is sign of worrying times

What a sorry state we’re in when your school-resource officer has to be dressed in full tactical gear welcoming kids to a Laguna Beach elementary school (Officials call for caution from drivers as Laguna Beach students return to class, Daily Pilot, Aug. 19).

That schools even need to be protected from a possible terrorist assault by a young man — it’s always a young man — carrying most likely an AR15 assault rifle that is capable of literally decapitating a young child’s body, it just makes me ill.

How and why did we get here? How do we extract ourselves? We can start by banning assault rifles, but there are already hundreds of millions of them out there. Think about that! Hundreds of millions of assault weapons. Not all will be used to massacre school kids, but that’s not the point.

We’ve allowed the National Rifle Assn. and conservatives to read into the 2nd amendment this somehow absolute owning of these weapons of war.

The youngsters of today are sick of this slaughter, and it will be slow, but you watch. By the time all of these fanatics in local and national government finally start dying off or are voted out, the kids are going to take back their schools, their movie theaters, their nightclubs, their concert venues.

Until then unfortunately, many innocents will likely perish due to a sickness that has enveloped this land.

Mike Aguilar
Costa Mesa

Government must protect people’s interests

Scott M. Bartell knows that PFAs have been contaminating our water sources and affecting our health for many decades (Commentary: PFAS are ‘forever’ chemicals contaminating our water sources and affecting our health, Daily Pilot, Aug. 18). This has been and still is a long-term regulatory failure. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine provided important information, but government must act upon it and other long-term chemical threats in a more timely fashion.

Our future, more and more, depends on government to protect our interests. Private industry exists to make a profit. Government exists to represent the interests of the people, not the political parties that are currently in power.

Jim Hoover
Huntington Beach

Stolen checks, bad mailboxes

Please consider advising Laguna residents to not mail their bills using the street-side mailboxes on Ocean Avenue. Several checks of mine, all dropped at this mailbox, were “lost.”

The clerks at the post office acknowledge thefts from these mailboxes are rampant and say they have complained to supervisors, yet their management does nothing. The city also has no jurisdiction.

These low-life thieves use tape and wire to “fish” for credit card data and checks.

At a minimum, you would think the postal authorities would place a warning sign. My calls ignored; they couldn’t care less! Can the city help?

Ken Denton
Laguna Beach

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