Toledo mayor: Trump didn't mean to pray for my city. But I pray for Washington.
Wade Kapszukiewicz, a Democrat, is the mayor of Toledo.
President Trump misspoke, of course, when he offered prayers for Toledo instead of Dayton, Ohio, where a gunman opened fire and killed nine people on Sunday. We all make mistakes from time to time. Nevertheless, Toledo is happy to accept his prayers, even if they were meant for Dayton. As mayor, my prayer is that our leaders in Washington finally summon the courage to do something — frankly, anything — to stop the senseless mass slaughter that continues to occur with regularity in our communities.
We remain the only developed country where mass shootings are a common occurrence. Why do we allow this to happen? We are the greatest nation on Earth, and we can do anything when we put our minds to it. Americans are desperate for a solution. If only our leaders in Washington felt the same urgency.
It is certainly possible for the United States to strike an appropriate balance between Second Amendment rights and protecting Americans from assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. But our country has failed to achieve this balance. The approaches we have taken as a nation are half-measures — at best — that have left Americans at risk. Our government is failing its people.
The American people are resilient, but our patience is running thin. We cannot allow Dayton or the weekend’s other mass shooting in El Paso to be the new normal. We should not be building a world where our children think that fear is the normal way of life in our schools, churches and shopping malls.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/06/toledo-mayor-trump-didnt-mean-pray-my-city-i-pray-washington/
