An L.A. child-abuse case; gun control and the Washington police shootings; the debate over breast cancer screening

As a worker, I have absolutely no objections to paying my fair share of taxes to support the social workers and others who do their best to try to protect at-risk children. However, at some point society must start asking some fairly unpleasant but pertinent questions, such as how many more dead/abused children can we keep paying for before we start to look at how many children these parents keep having?

Karen Weston
Lancaster

Thankfully, this poor family has a $2.6-million judgment pending. And as Tylette Davis' mom stated, "We'll be able to buy a five-, six-bedroom house so all my grandkids could be under one roof, and Tylette [who recently pleaded guilty to trying to stab her current boyfriend] can get custody of her children again."

I only hope the family saves some of that taxpayer money for the essentials of living: whiskey, cigarettes and crack cocaine.

Rich Siegel
Los Angeles

I am truly dumbfounded. How can someone even think that that lifestyle is OK for children? And why didn't the authorities get involved sooner?

A little boy was murdered because a mother couldn't take care of her children properly. If you're living in lesser means, then why in the world would you have children? Better yet, why wouldn't you take care of them? It's just baffling.

I'm glad that those kids are getting a chance to have a normal life now; they deserve it. I am thankful that their family members are caring enough to take the children in, and I wish them all the joy and happiness the world has to offer.

Alexandra Sherwood

Coto de Caza

After reading your article, I'm sending a donation to Planned Parenthood.

Kate Nelson
Manhattan Beach

All right, I know I'm going to sound very politically incorrect, but here goes: This is not an issue of race. This legacy of children having children and abuse running rampant through families generation after generation is an issue of ignorance. Pure and simple.

When a 13- or 14- or 15-year-old has a couple of children (with more likely on the way) and social services have been called over and over, something needs to be done. The government should step in and offer a monetary incentive to the birth mother to have her tubes tied and the birth father to have a vasectomy.

Katy Evans
Pacific Palisades

Guns, gun rights -- and 4 dead

Re “Crazy about guns,” Editorial, Dec. 1, and “Four police officers slain in Seattle-area ambush,” Nov. 30

As is usual when The Times editorializes against guns, you focus on guns and miss the real point.

Yes, the shooter used a gun to kill four police officers in Washington, but the real crime was that the legal systems of two states turned this criminal loose again and again to prey on society.

In case you haven't noticed, our California legal system does the same thing -- most horribly in the death of Lily Burk last summer.

Jim Dodd

San Diego

Your editorial hit the bull's-eye. We need to stop crazy people from getting guns -- but we should go a step further and keep crazy fugitives in jail rather than pardoning them and putting them back on the streets so that they can get their guns and go "even more crazy."

Michael L. Friedman
Torrance

Thank you for the spot-on editorial about the sick love of guns that permeates our society. Expect a noisy backlash.

A large sector of America confuses its loss of relevance, whether through aging or cultural change, with a philosophical threat against its political beliefs . . . and reaches for its guns.

If Americans are "wired" to love guns, it's because the "electricians" were the gun manufacturers themselves, who relentlessly promoted their lethal products in the 19th century.

Michael Jenning

Van Nuys

"Knife-Wielding Assailant Kills 4 (or 13)" is not a common Times headline. Your editorial makes it clear: There is a direct correlation between guns and murder rates.

As long as Americans tolerate the NRA's inane platitude, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people," we must wipe away our crocodile tears, bury our dead and admit that death is the price our society is willing to pay for the right to bear arms.

Or we could send a message to the NRA: Our right to life comes before the right to bear arms.

If the NRA response is the defiant mumbo-jumbo about prying guns from cold, dead hands, then my point is made: Guns = Death.

Arch Miller
Arcadia

The tragic shooting of the police officers points out two failures of our criminal justice systems: Gun laws' inability to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. Criminals just do not obey laws; that is why they are called criminals. The bigger failure in this case was the inability to keep a dangerous criminal locked up. Is the situation in our state any better?

Murry I. Rozansky
Chatsworth