Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by the Collegian or its editorial board.

Dear Collegian,

A message to Bob Schaffer, former member of the United States House of Representatives.

Bob, your latest column would be down-right laughable if, as principal of Liberty Commons School, you didn’t have the privilege and awesome responsibility for guiding, instructing and role-modeling for our next generation of leaders. Your image of a Coors Field becoming the OK Corral with the Rockies (and Cubs?) hunkered in their dugouts with loaded artillery ready for action is wrong on too many levels. The proliferation of guns is what enables just this incident that we all find so deplorable. If you really think an armed citizenry is appropriate, envision a bunch of armed soccer parents – I mean what could go wrong, right?

Name calling – “crazed Leftist” and “loon” – is something I know schools discourage so please don’t model it. Your students need you to model respectful language, and even the language of anger and passion can be respectful. Our young people are rightfully confused when they see the adults they look up to being hypocritical. Your “loons” or the mentally ill as they deserve to be called, deserve health care not guns, but this Republican Congress recently approved giving them – guns.

I know you didn’t mean to disparage law enforcement but disparage you did. They can’t be counted on to defend the population? I shouldn’t trust the police to protect me? Your statement “Government dependency is a perilous strategy – always” stunned me. All my life I have “relegated myself to government dependency” because I depend on the police, and the fire department, and the City of Fort Collins and the public-school system, to name a few. You make your living off the public schools. And, in fact, for six years, I depended on you to represent me in our federal government and now you are implying that that may have put me at risk, that depending on the government is perilous.

Bob, you have demonstrated your commitment to our nation as a public servant. Your ongoing service as a public-school principal is honorable. This column does not reflect the diplomacy you demonstrated as a US Representative. You can do better.

Jane Everham, Fort Collins resident