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Readers React: Gun control and tobacco laws: Has a cigarette ever murdered someone?

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To the editor: Jonah Goldberg berates gun-control advocates for not empathizing with gun-freedom advocates — as if we should waste time trying to understand why so many people cling to firearms despite the tens of thousands of U.S. deaths they cause annually. How about empathizing with the survivors of the fallen? (“Smoking guns, and tobacco,” Opinion, Dec. 15)

If Goldberg could prevent this unnecessary slaughter of real, living people by interfering with the enjoyment of people who like to shoot deer or paper targets, wouldn’t he choose human life?

I was a Marine and I know the allure of firearms. Guns are marvelous machines. Sometimes, in the proper hands at the proper time, they must be aimed at human beings. The Constitution protects their use in a militia context as part of its plan to “insure domestic tranquillity.”

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Let’s find a way to combat the heartlessness of the gun lobby so we the people can live in peace.

Bart Mills, Manhattan Beach

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To the editor: Goldberg compares apples to oranges, or in this case smoking to guns. While some similarities exist between the arguments for eliminating tobacco use and controlling guns (both are certainly health concerns), the two issues are different in terms of effect.

Tobacco will probably slowly kill you (but not me as long as I stay away from your secondhand smoke). However, guns have the potential to violently and immediately kill us both (as suicide-by-gun statistics show).

Instead of Goldberg buying a gun, as he says he has considered doing, my fellow concerned citizens and I would prefer that he just pick up a pack of cigarettes.

James Peterson, Beaumont

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To the editor: Secondhand smoke aside, it seems very difficult to murder someone with a cigarette.

Michael Cunha, Palos Verdes Estates

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