To the Editor:

I am writing in response to "Modern Weapons too Dangerous for Public."

I agree that the founding fathers could never have imagined how far firearms technology has come in a relatively short amount of time. But, the fact of the matter is that one will never be able to stop a mentally ill person if they set out on a task. He mentioned the school in China where a man slashed 22 children and 1 adult but nobody was killed.

What he failed to research or mention was that since 2010 23 people have been killed by knife type attacks in Chinese schools. This proves my point that banning certain firearms is not the answer, and that you can't stop crazy. In the killings in China it was also speculated that the lack of help for mentally ill is a large part of the problem.

He also states that the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

Let me ask you this. Did the founding fathers ever envision that we would have cars and motorcycles that can go 200 mph? Of course not. Yet a minority of the people who drive these machines at high speeds on public roads have caused crashes and hundreds of deaths.

Should we take these high performance machines off the road because the public cannot handle them? Of course it is easier to kill people with modern firearms. But who is to say the same person can't build a bomb or drive a car through a crowded school yard.

They will always find a way.

The problem is the civil liberties people that do not want the mentally ill people that need to be institutionalized to be. Look at the psychiatric center in Ogdensburg.

It used to house hundreds of patients. Now they have very few. Where are all the people that probably should be there? They are on our streets. I do know that modern medicine has a lot to do with this, but every day I see people that are a danger to themselves or others on the streets because the law says they can only be held so long if they meet certain requirements.

They know what to say to the doctors so they cannot be held. We need to change these laws and keep the civil liberties people out of it.

What happened at Sandy Hook is a horrific tragedy, but we should not have a knee jerk reaction. Get these people the help they need and the rest will fall in line. If we start imposing too many rules and letting government run and rule everything we no longer live in a democracy.

Jason Demers, Ogdensburg