We are residents of Bellingham who once lived in the lovely town of Newtown, Conn. Our three daughters attended elementary school there. It's the same town where 20 first-graders and seven adults were shot to death Friday by a young man firing the same kind of automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines used in other recent mass shootings.

Newtown is a town much like Bellingham -- family-oriented, good schools, committed teachers, a small town less than two hours from a major city. Really, not much separates these two towns though they're located in opposite corners of the U.S.

We do not want more senseless mass shootings of innocents. Please join us in asking our Congressional representatives to reinstate the ban on semi-automatic and automatic weapons. In addition, ask them for tighter screening of applicants seeking to purchase a gun at a store or a gun show, and a ban on the purchase of high-capacity magazines. Finally, our legislators must address how to limit access to guns by the mentally ill and provide better services and support for them.

We all have a duty to protect the children in our community. This protection comes not with more automatic weapons and high-capacity ammo, but with sensible limits on the public's access to weaponry intended for use only by soldiers facing the enemy on battlefields, not against helpless first-graders and their school staff.

Carol and Ray Dellecker

Bellingham