Has the Republican Party lost its collective mind?

A recent bill proposed by Rep. Michael Thibodeau, R-Northport, would require Maine schools to teach gun safety courses to all its students. Happily, the bill was rejected, thanks to the opposition of school superintendents who believe teachers have enough on their plates without having to bow to the NRA.

I do believe that gun owners should be required to take a gun safety course, though I am not a gun owner.

Now comes a new gun bill proposed by Aaron Libby, R-Waterboro, L.D. 662, that would allow “any gun owner to carry a loaded gun or crossbow in their vehicle or motor boat.”

“There’s more,” according to the newspaper in an article buried in On Maine Politics, in the B section on March 4. Libby’s bill would also allow a firearms holder to shoot from the vehicle or motorboat, “in defense of life or property.”

Have gun owners risen to the height of insanity in their obsession to be fully armed anywhere and everywhere? Is this the response to the massacre of 20 little children and their heroic teachers?

Is the American culture of violence our due for refusing to speak out in outrage at what we have become, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

I will have to be very careful when I take out my tiny kayak this summer that I not pose a threat to an armed person in a motor boat bearing down on me.

Suzanne Hedrick

Nobleboro