To the Editor:

With each new incidence of gun-related violence, we ask each other what we can do to make our communities safe.

Two weeks ago, people gathered in Bath for a forum that allowed people with widely differing views to voice their opinions.

While the conversation remained civil, disagreement, filled with emotion, was apparent. Our visions of safe community differ.

One vision would assure safe community by strengthening our systems of protection against others: increase police presence; monitor with locked doors and surveillance those who come and go; and be reassured by the presence of weapons ready for use against intruders.

A different vision would assure safe community by reaching out to each other, so every person could live a reasonable life with meaningful work, a decent place to live, enough to eat and access to health care. Rather than arm ourselves against each other, we would minimize the presence of weapons, limiting the potential for violence and tragedy — intended or unintended.

We would see others as people like ourselves, with dreams for themselves and their children. Rather than making strangers and enemies of each other, we would learn how we are alike and celebrate our differences. We would open doors instead of closing and locking them.

Could these differing visions begin to come together?

There are real dangers and dangerous people in the world; communities must have systems of protection. But we also create danger and dangerous people by failing to see each other as human beings sharing common needs.

How many weapons will it take to make us safe if some of us are hopeless and desperate?

We have enough resources, intelligence and imagination to assure a community of abundance and safety for everyone. We must find the generosity, compassion and commitment to make it happen.

Cathey Cyrus
Woolwich