To the Editor,

An article by Michelle Krupa from CNN titled, The tough decisions parents are making as never-ending threats to schools become the norm, highlights the increasing safety issues and threats of violence, which parents and teachers, police, and communities have to manage. The Cranston gun range creates and increases the potential for threats and possible acts of violence in our city.  I reflected on the dangerous and disrespectful situation our citizens, school children, and teachers are placed in as a result of the sounds of weapons firing at the gun range. The sounds of gunfire in an urban community are not normal, and it would be unsafe to normalize it. 

Unfortunately, today’s social and community values of decency and respect are being broken every day, along with increased threats of harm and violence, as well as actual acts of gun violence, which reverberate every day in our communities.  Rhode Island isn’t immune; it has been lucky. When will someone use the “friendly” sounds of gunfire that fill the air and violate the city’s noise ordinance by a deranged person as cover to inflict the trauma that this article portrayed and that recently was inflicted upon the students, teachers, and families of Apalachee High School in Georgia? This is not a choice of “Safety or Silence”; as the Herald portrayed in its article, it is an issue of Safety, well-being, and Respect. If there is an issue of Silence, it’s the Silence of our elected officials who have not or are afraid to speak up for safety.

I believe that the gun range provides a safe place where police can safely practice using their weapons to make us safe, but the inability to contain the sounds of their guns firing is unsafe. And this is not, as Mr. Moretti from Mayor Hopkins’s office stated, a concern of just a few radical people tied to the extreme left.”

This issue is solely a safety issue for everyone involved, from the police to our students and teachers to the residents of Cranston. It’s not a conservative, liberal, Cranston East, West, or political issue. It is a safety issue first and foremost, and we should work together, respect each other and solve this issue.

Tom Wojick, of Cranston