To the Editor:

The deaths of the 19 Uvalde, Texas 10-year-old 4th graders has stolen more than a combined 1,000 years of future life from them — meaning that they collectively will be missing more than:

1,000 Memorial Days,

1,000 Fourth of Julys,

1,000 Halloweens,

1,000 Thanksgivings,

1,000 Christmas Eves,

1,000 Christmas Days,

1,000 New Years Eves,

1,000 New Years Days,

1,000 Valentines Days, and

1,000 Easters...

...not to mention [potentially] 19 wedding days, the births of their own children and grandchildren, plus countless other days, weeks, months, years, and decades.

However, this latest tragedy almost became understandable to me when I imagined the following “mash-up” of our Constitution’s 1st and 2nd Amendments:

“Congress shall make no laws respecting ... the right of people to keep and bear arms, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... which shall not be infringed.”

At least this seems to be the way our cowardly Congress has (mis)read our 1st and 2nd Amendments ever since the slaughter of 20 Sandy Hook six-and-seven-year-old 1st graders ten long years ago — which now feels like yesterday.

Richard Siegelman

Plainview, NY