Your July 16 editorial “John Kerry should be fired” hurls empty insults at Kerry while missing the point of the important work he is doing.

Yes, Kerry is “globetrotting” – he is working on a problem that requires global cooperation to solve.

Yes, Kerry was reluctant to name all of his staffers in a televised hearing. He needs to protect his civil service employees from unnecessary harassment. Anyone who has followed the story of the midwestern weatherman driven out of his job for talking about climate change knows this is a real threat. And yes, Kerry is a “failed Presidential candidate.”  Running for president and failing (at least once) is a trait he shares in common with Theodore Roosevelt, and even Donald Trump.

Kerry is qualified, competent, and experienced for the task of building consensus for global climate action. The real waste of taxpayer money is questioning him in unnecessary hearings while the world burns.

Mary Memmott

Framingham

According to an article in Thursday’s Boston Herald, Judiciary Committee Co-Chair Rep. Michael Day stated that his 141-page gun reform bill needs to move quickly, “given what’s going in Massachusetts.” There is nothing going on Massachusetts that warrants the draconian measures that make up this legislation.

This bill targets people who are already obeying every gun law on the books in Massachusetts. It fails to address criminal activity or mental illness. The Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association’s legislative committee released a lengthy critique of the bill, ending with the recommendation that the organization not support it as written.

This legislation is nothing less than a temper tantrum in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. It would turn law-abiding, licensed gunowners into felons overnight and drive firearms retailers out of business.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Gary Wilk

Pittsfield

The cartoon in the issue of Thursday, July 20 (“Cartoonist’s take: Oppenheimer”) has one artificial intelligence robot telling the other: “Knowing that it [atomic bomb] could mean the end of the world, he went ahead and built it.” The second robot responds: “Those humans never learn, do they?” What was omitted from this scenario is that if the United States had not allowed J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the project to build the nuclear bomb, the likelihood is that Nazi scientist Werner von Braun would have in short order built one for the Nazis. In times of existential war, morality can be very complicated indeed.

Harvey A. Silverglate

Cambridge