The taxpayers of Connecticut have set aside $50 million in bonds to pay all the costs of a new Sandy Hook elementary school, "Newtown helping design new Sandy Hook school," (March 21). That amount is four times the amount "it usually covers for similarly affluent districts."

Bonds are debt. Connecticut is going into deeper debt to pay for a replacement building after razing a structurally sound and above-average school building for emotional reasons. Those reasons are fully justified. No one wants to be in a building where a mass murder occurred. We are humans, not machines.

The issue here is who should pay the expenses for the new school? Connecticut taxpayers? Newtown taxpayers? Here is a good recommendation: the government of Connecticut must put a 25 percent special tax on all gun and ammunition purchases until the $50 million is recovered with interest.