Regarding the May 13 online news article “White House to host 9-hour prayer festival focused on Christian roots of U.S.”:
When I was growing up as a Jewish kid in an overwhelmingly non-Jewish city in an overwhelmingly non-Jewish country, I took great comfort knowing that America’s first president wrote a letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, boldly stating “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” That simple statement gave me and millions of other Jews a belief that though we were a minority, our rights, liberties and freedom of worship would be respected.
I have never felt that the U.S. government was intentionally imposing Christian beliefs on me until now, when I learned about Sunday’s prayer festival on the National Mall. As reported by The Post, the event centers on the idea that the founders wanted the United States to be explicitly Christian. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) are slated to speak.
If the Founding Fathers were to address this gathering, they would oppose it. After the Constitution was ratified, they amended it with the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Paul L. Newman, Merion Station, Pennsylvania
In the abstract, celebrating the religious beliefs that have influenced U.S. history is innocuous. After all, a civil libertarian as renowned as Justice William O. Douglas wrote in a 1952 Supreme Court opinion: “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” That is demonstrated by Thomas Jefferson’s assertion in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence that all people are endowed with natural rights bestowed on them “by their Creator.”
However, the organizers of this weekend’s prayer festival clearly have an agenda to connect the founding of the American republic with what they refer to as the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” to the exclusion of the beliefs of Americans who have other faiths or are nonreligious. The First Amendment’s clause guaranteeing the free exercise of religion should be generously interpreted, but the American people and the courts should strictly maintain the establishment clause’s commitment to what Jefferson called the “wall of separation” between church and state.
Steven S. Berizzi, Norwalk, Connecticut
Gun violence solutions
Megan McArdle was right to argue in her May 4 column, “An unworkable but useful thought experiment about guns,” that the gun-control crowd has been “looking at the problem wrong” and that those serious about addressing violent crime should reconsider “putting so much energy into efforts to keep people from buying guns.”
But her proposed solution of reshaping firearm ownership through “harm reduction” fails to address violent crime and may make the problem worse.
For decades, gun-control advocates have chased ways to reduce the number of guns in circulation, and to that end they have enacted laws that infringe on Second Amendment rights while doing little to deter violent criminals, such as banning certain firearms, limiting their purchase and even forcing their surrender. They ignore the reality that those intent on committing violence are not cowed by additional gun laws.
Applying “harm reduction” principles to shape which firearms Americans buy would be as misguided in this context as it is in drug intervention. The answer to gun violence is not government steering citizens toward firearms that bureaucrats deem more acceptable.
The discussion should instead focus on those committing acts of violence. Repeat violent offenders should not be allowed to cycle endlessly back onto the streets under soft-on-crime policies. Schools should be protected from rogue attackers with meaningful security measures rather than signs declaring gun-free zones. And far more attention should be devoted to identifying and helping those in severe mental health crises before they become a danger to themselves or others.
In that sense, listening to responsible gun owners would indeed be a novel approach.
John Commerford, Fairfax
The writer is director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action.
Megan McArdle outlined an unusual idea: that we should help people buy long guns instead of handguns. Her thought experiment provides an interesting jumping-off point for discussing the life-and-death issue of gun violence in America.
McArdle posited that gun policy is essentially a tug of war over gun ownership, but the central issue for gun policy is about reducing gun violence, not merely about gun control. I agree with McArdle that “gun violence is a scourge that makes all manner of things worse in society.” In 2024, the most recent year with complete data, more than 44,000 people died of gun-related injuries. Sure, keeping guns out of the hands of violent people — the ownership issue — is key, but is not the only path to reducing gun violence.
Steps to drive those numbers dramatically lower include safe storage laws, strict magazine limits, serialization requirements, better suicide prevention efforts, community violence intervention and banning guns from public places.
Every gun owner should be required to demonstrate proficiency, to renew their license every few years, to register every gun with a state agency and to obtain adequate liability insurance. It’s important for every gun owner to bear arms responsibly, conforming to essential, common-sense regulations.
And in any discussion about guns and gun violence, we should keep in mind that the main purpose of a gun is to harm a living creature. No consideration of any gun policy should proceed without that acknowledgment.
Robert Tiller, Silver Spring
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