You have to stand for something or you will fall for anything. Lyrics to a song by a country music singer, Aaron Tippin. After the Fourth of July mass shooting in Illinois, I pulled up the Q&A of the candidates for Dougco sheriff to determine their “actual” views on Colorado’s red flag law to determine if this law would have prevented any one of the recent mass shootings. They all put private property, aka guns, God and the constitution ahead of the safety of the citizens of our county.

Only one candidate, Darren Weekly, came close to an honest answer dealing with mental health and guns. Those other candidates are the people Aaron Tippin sang about. I can guarantee if I showed up at a Douglas County church one Sunday morning, with a chain saw, I would be arrested, my property confiscated and I would be placed on a mental health hold without due process.

Roy Legg

Highlands Ranch

Stop hyperbole over Roe

I was amazed at the hyperbole of Linda Newell’s guest column in the July 7, 2022 Highlands Ranch Herald regarding the reversal of Roe vs. Wade.

Her comments that she “bawled with her children” who are afraid that they will “be sacrificed or be put in prison” if something goes wrong with a future pregnancy is astounding to me, as is her comment that “Americans with uteruses have fewer rights than a firearm.”

How have we gotten to the point in our civilization that the “right” to end the life of your unborn child, which occurs 100% of the time in an abortion, is seen as such an integral part of our society?

We rightly worry about the increase in violence with shootings in 2022 America, but perhaps the lack of protection afforded to the most vulnerable of our society, the unborn, plays a role in decreasing the value of human life across the board.

Now is the time to have true discussions, without the hyperbolic rhetoric, of how to provide for women who find themselves in situations where in the past an abortion would be the automatic response. Let’s come together as a society and demonstrate that we truly value life, in all of its forms.

Mark Sanders

Highlands Ranch