Sample letters to the editor

These two letters to editor were written by Barbara Markley, the chair of the Broward League's Gun Safety Committee.

Drowning in Plastic Bags

With climate change accelerating and natural disasters intensifying, we all want to help and recycling makes us feel good. Unfortunately, it's woefully inadequate. For example, look at plastic bags--they take hundreds of years to decompose and only 1% of them are recycled worldwide. They kill 100,000 marine creatures a year and a million sea birds. People use 500 billion plastic bags a year, that's a million bags a minute. So, what can you do? Reuse the bags you have or, better still, purchase cloth bags that last for years. Leave some in your car to use whenever you shop. Encourage other people to do the same.

Numbers Tell the Story

Numbers tell a story, a story of harm inflicted on our community by our elected officials. Fort Lauderdale has hosted 30 years of gun shows in the middle of Holiday Park where children play. These 8 gun shows a year draw 3,000 people per show. If every attendee buys one gun, then 24,000 guns flood our community each year, for a total of 720,000 guns over 30 years.

The 24,000 people attending these guns shows comprise only 12% of Fort Lauderdale's population and only 1% of Broward's population. The vast majority of us don't attend gun shows--but we still pay for them. Gun violence costs taxpayers $229 billion every year. Victims of gun violence often suffer injuries so severe that they require round the clock care for the rest of their lives. One person who is paralyzed or brain damaged can cost as much as $1.7 million to treat. We pay for all of that. And we pay in ways that cannot be measured--with fear for our children's safety, with our loss of security, with our never-ending grief.

Broward County won't rent the Convention Center to a gun show "because it involves a great deal of risk". So, why does the Fort Lauderdale City Commission rent War Memorial Auditorium to the gun show? The most important mission of the Fort Lauderdale City Commission is to represent the public interest—OUR interest. There is simply no argument that can be made that hosting 8 massive gun shows a year in Holiday Park represents our interest. The lease to the gun show must end. The numbers tell the story