I believe Daniel Roberts (Sun Journal, July 2) deserves 55 years in jail for murdering Melissa Mendoza.

No, the murder was not the fault of the gun manufacturer, any more than it would have been a baseball bat manufacturer’s fault if he had killed her with a baseball bat.

I believe that Roberts killed Mendoza because she denied him access to their child.

Would anyone in their right mind take a bear cub from its mother?

Such an act would be cruel beyond words to both the cub and to the mother bear, not to mention potentially fatal to the taker.

The human species instinctively reacts with the same kind of primal rage.

Sometimes it is contained and sometimes not.

I think this tragedy was positively avoidable. Shared custody is what is best for the children and for both parents.

The Legislature and the courts need to end full custody where one parent (usually mother) wins all, the other parent (usually father) literally loses all and the children lose contact with the loser.

Shared parenting is the only human and humane answer to custody disputes.

John Natale, Winchester, Mass.

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