As I have said many times in these pages, we are all allowed our own opinions, but not our own facts. A reverend, who should be particularly careful about his public speech, has written a letter here that is rife with unsubstantiated “statistics.”

Those supposed statistics are all written in attempt to damn the bogeyman — the NRA. None of the quoted statistics about school deaths are true, and a very small dip into the FBI database — available online to anyone — would show that reality.

No NRA member has ever been responsible for a school shooting or any other mass shooting. However, it was an NRA member and instructor that saved countless lives in the horrific church shooting in Texas recently — a fact rarely reported by our media outlets.

The NRA is responsible for the Eddie Eagle program that teaches gun safety in schools. They are also responsible for countless programs teaching men and women how to handle guns safely and properly.

They do not support murder. They did not support illegal gun use.

They do not “buy” politicians, unless you wish to believe that the unions, Planned Parenthood and many others do. They support politicians who already believe in the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

Guns are not the problem in America. There are over 300 million legal guns owned by Americans. There would be no one left alive if these were all being used to murder people.

Also not reported in our media, but confirmed by FBI statistics, is the fact that over 1 million lives a year are saved by legal weapon holders. Most times, the appearance of the gun is all that is needed to dissuade a would-be attacker.

Also, as a reminder, the Constitution is clear that the government does not give us our rights, it merely reinforces, in writing, rights that were given to us by our creator. What the government did not give, it cannot take away.

What has changed is our culture.

Our children are taught to hate our country and to disrespect authority. They are taught that disrespecting our flag and our anthem are noble gestures, They are taught that “G-d” is no longer necessary in their lives, and that the 10 Commandments are just the 10 Suggestions.

They are taught that everyone is a victim of something and that victims have a right to fight back.

In fact, a new leftist group out there is actually named “By Any Means Necessary.”

They are taught by Hollywood movies and video games that life is cheap. They are taught to enshrine the opinions of athletes and “celebrities,” and to disdain the truly productive members of our society.

Teachers are afraid of students and their parents. Police officers are afraid to act lest they be sued and, as a result, many are killed.

It is the easy way out to pick one entity like the NRA to focus all the blame on for school shootings, but to do so is intellectually dishonest and, worse, will be totally ineffective in solving any of our problems related to mass murder in our country.

Here are some actual statistics:

Between 1998 and 2016 (28 years), the NRA spent approximately $13 million on all candidates, parties and leadership political action committees.

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion mill, spent $33.9 million on outside spending from the 2012 through 2016 election cycles (4 years). EMILY’s List, another abortion group, spent $33.2 million on politics in 2016 alone.

I am not belittling the importance of dealing with violence in America. But, if the reverend is truly concerned with human life, he would do better to speak up against Planned Parenthood. They received $543 million in taxpayer money in 2016.

The NRA received nothing — ever.

With our money, Planned Parenthood performs 321,000 abortions per year. That’s 880 per day. One abortion every 98 seconds.

Those abortions disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. Their right to do that, unlike the right to bear arms, is not enshrined in our Constitution — rather it was written into it by an out-of-control Supreme Court who decided that somehow the right to abortion was included in our right to privacy.

So, we all have the right to speak out. But when we allow raw emotion to overcome critical thinking and judgement, we do nothing for those dead children, and we do nothing to try to repair our broken culture.

– Stuart R. Goldstein, Green Creek