Letter: Officials should work for police, citizens, not NRA

The current divide between the police and the public, especially the African American community, is being portrayed as a racial problem. The real problem is guns. It is time for politicians in Baton Rouge and Washington, D.C., to stop taking money from special interest groups, putting the party first and hiding behind the second amendment.
How many hunters do you see with military rifles or machine guns or guns of this type to protect their homes?
It is time for our congressmen and legislators to finally do something to help the police and not the National Rifle Association.
Police across the nation have been trying to stop the spread of military type weapons and body armor protection for the general public.
The Second Amendment says nothing about a mentally unstable person or a convicted felon being unable to buy as many guns as they want without a background check and bring them into a church, school or anywhere they want to without a permit or registration certificate.
Police are human, too, and have families and deserve the protection of politicians. Instead of trying to protect the gay and lesbian community, the President and the congress should be doing something to protect the law enforcement community, which is not a bad habit.
The more confusion the NRA and one of the major political parties can create between police and the minority community, the more guns they can sell, and the more money the politicians can put in their pockets.
In addition to the Black Lives Matter movement, which is the result of police killing of approximately 100 blacks a year, there needs to be another movement dealing with the reason why 6,000 blacks are killing each other annually. We must start with our elected officials. The Republican Party and the NRA are a bigger threat than ISIS.
We must start with the strongest weapon we have, the vote!
Cornel Keeler
Morgan City