FedEX shootings never would have happened if FBI had followed the law

Your Sunday editorial about the proliferation of guns did not go far enough in singling out the right people to blame. You wrote that we need more gun control laws, but we already have so many of these laws on the books that we don’t follow through on.

Fact: the FBI was called in to investigate the shooter of the FedEx massacre, Brandon Hole, a year ago — in March of 2020 — because his mother had concerns. The FBI confiscated from Hole a gun, a laptop and whatever else they could get in order to protect the kid and society. But what they didn’t do next is the critical issue.

The FBI was supposed to put this information into a federal database so that Hole could not purchase another weapon for at least a year and without a thorough background check.

How then was Hole able to walk into a store and purchase all that he needed to commit this horrible crime? That is the question. And that is where the blame lies!

What are our law enforcement agencies doing? If they had followed the laws, this shooting would never have occurred.

Rosemarie Nowicki, Oak Park

George Floyd, unintentional hero

In life, George Floyd seemed just another ordinary human being, much like many of us, living as best he could. As fate would have it, however, in the tragedy of his death under the knee of an unyielding, uncaring police officer named Derek Chauvin, he has become a symbol for all others similarly abused for generations, without justice.

Spontaneously, his likeness has appeared in public places around the world, put there by other ordinary people hungering for justice. Thus do some of us unintentionally become global martyrs. Thus shall the name George Floyd live on as an accidental hero in the search for equal justice. His name now stands with those who similarly suffered or labored in that cause, from Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, Viola Liuzzo and Emmett Till to Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

While only time can tell whether this marks a real turning point in rendering justice fairly for all, it brightens hope that it truly is.

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park