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When I served in the U.S. House of Representatives, I wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act. Today, I am concerned about efforts to blame mental illness and people with disabilities as a cause for the mass shootings that plague our country. Leading the erroneous charge is President Trump, who says “mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger”  in mass shootings, refers to perpetrators as “mentally ill monsters,” and suggests a solution of “involuntary confinement” for some with mental illness. (Former Rep. Tony Coelho, 8/20)

President Trump and his followers delight in his image as a disrupter — a dauntless fighter raring to take on entrenched political interests and sacred cows. But when it comes to addressing America’s gun problem, Mr. Trump has proved both conventional and weak. As the shock fades of this month's back-to-back massacres in Texas and Ohio, he is poised to disappoint yet again. On Tuesday, The Atlantic reported that Mr. Trump had assured Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, that he is no longer considering universal background checks. (8/20)

For a moment, it seemed as though what was usually assumed in Washington could no longer be taken for granted. President Trump was promising “very meaningful background checks” in the wake of two gruesome mass shootings. He insisted that congressional Republicans would “lead the charge” for new gun legislation, which would have been a tectonic shift in the politics of guns that only sustained pressure from a figure such as Mr. Trump could possibly have produced. (8/20)

Imagine being an Arizona police officer with its lax Wild West gun laws and with a higher than the national average for violent crime. In a sense, it’s surprising our officers don’t use their guns more often, given the danger they are surrounded by, thanks in part to our NRA owned legislators, who refuse to even hold hearings about the lightest of restrictions. (Mike McClellan, 8/20)

Dawn Usanga’s expression of grief over her 7-year-old son’s shooting death last week speaks volumes about the appalling conditions on many St. Louis streets these days. Her quote was displayed in large type on the front page of Sunday’s Post-Dispatch, but it bears repeating here: “In a way, I’m kind of happy he died at 7,” she said of her son, Xavier Usanga. “These streets didn’t have a chance to ruin him. He could have just as easily been swept up in this war, and the boy who shot him could have been my boy someday.” (8/19)