N.Y. Subway Shooting

Columnist Mike Royko’s sympathy with Bernhard Goetz (Editorial Pages, Jan. 18) is a legitimate immediate reaction to the New York subway shooting. On the same page columnist Ellen Goodman moves beyond this easy satisfaction with elementary justice and interprets the overwhelming public support that Royko epitomizes.

Many of us urban dwellers lead alarmingly lonely lives over which we seem to have little control. Monthly bills, pressures at work, and the increasingly awful fear of being attacked consume too much of our energy. It becomes more and more difficult to see and appreciate our own worth. All this leads to a desperate effort to assert ourselves in some way.

When the four punks demanded money from him, Bernhard Goetz fought back. His revenge symbolized the strong blow we all would like to give to all that angers and frustrates us daily. Goodman correctly points to the need for “collective action” and “building communities” in order to relieve the chaos that thrives in our cities.

It is a sad irony that the Goetz incident occurred on a mass transit system, one of the most brilliant efforts at communal cooperation. We do need to work together to transcend our alienation. Rallying behind Goetz is perhaps a symptom of this need, but it is by no means a solution.

SARAH M. GOLDSTEIN

Van Nuys

I was disappointed to learn of Royko’s pro-vigilante stance regarding Bernhard Goetz and the New York subway incident. Apparently the fear Royko experienced when he was mugged has caused him to flip-flop on the gun-control issue and to discount the principles our Founding Fathers cherished. Perhaps it is understandable.

The abject humiliation, terror and even adrenalin-induced pain generated by a brutal mugging are no doubt devastating. No one in a civilized society should have to endure this; law enforcement and criminal justice indeed need improvement. Nevertheless, I thought Royko had more courage, faith and strength.

Most who believe that Goetz should be prosecuted speak of the resultant anarchy created when any citizen takes the law into his own hands. While their point is well made, Royko protests on a more primitive level. He argues that the motives behind revenge and self-defense are justifiable and that vigilantism will persuade thugs to think twice and ultimately mend their evil ways.

He neglects to mention that when fear and vengeance are allowed to mature freely, mobs and lynchings are born. He also neglects to mention that widespread vigilantism will encourage thugs to stab and shoot their victims first, before taking the risk that the victim is actually a vigilante.

While there is room for better police protection and criminal justice, the real problems lay with our society. Why can’t our citizens travel to and from work safely? How and why have we bred so many hundreds of thousands of desperate, petty criminals with no respect or fondness for their environment?

Why do so many Americans feel they have so little to lose? It is not difficult to see Kurt Vonnegut’s point when he said “We’re living in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages, they haven’t ended yet.”

CHRIS JONES

Torrance

I am tired of the many defensive arguments for Goetz! There is no justification for shooting four punks who had no guns but apparently intended to rob Goetz. I, too, have been robbed (and it was at gunpoint). It cost me $5. At the time I had rather expected it. I had hidden in my clothing something more than $100. The $5 in my wallet was life insurance, a small price to pay. This was only one of many violent physical encounters I have had in more than 75 years.

Why didn’t I shoot someone or, as Goetz did, four young hoodlums? Because I have never carried firearms except during my service in World War II. I am glad I was not called on to use my weapon during that time. Yes, I have had many times when I, too, could have killed in a moment of passion and anger. And I thank God that over the years, it only cost me five bucks.

HALLECK J. HOYT

Pasadena

Neither Lee Dembart nor Charles Ansell who contributed the articles (Editorial Pages, Jan. 10), “Vigilantes, Victims and Deadly Force,” mentioned the fact that Goetz was able to shoot four men without being shot himself because the four that faced him didn’t have pistols themselves. They were the so-called outlaws who were the only ones who were supposed to have guns, as per one of the simplistic slogans of the National Rifle Assn.. (“when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”). Because New York has the strongest pistol-control law of any city in the United States, it would seem that it would have been the outlaws who had the pistols, not Goetz.

Instead, Goetz had the gun and those who accosted him only sharpened screwdrivers. What would have happened to him if the outlaws had been armed takes little imagination. Yet the NRA fights every pistol-control bill tooth and nail, seemingly unaware that in the not-too-distant future almost everyone will be armed. Can’t the NRA see that every altercation will end in a shoot-out and that the rule of law will be replaced by the rule of a gun wielded by the quickest or meanest?

The NRA defeated Proposition 15 in 1982 with slogans that appeal to the uninformed such as the one quoted above. The facts are that in countries with pistol-control laws such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel and West Germany, the number killed by pistols last year was in each case less than 100, while in the United States it was 15,000, a number greater than our losses of any year in the Vietnam War.

Pistols are making war in the homes and streets of America every hour of every day, while the NRA leads us to the polls by the nose to defeat even the weakest attempt to control them.

This phenomenon is due largely to the identification of many of us with Hollywood Western heroes, so that a slogan such as “The West wasn’t won with a registered gun.” conjures up visions of a man on a horse with a gun on his hip that is his and his alone and which he can use freely to deal out death if he deems it.

Let us remember that many of those Westerns that portrayed the glory and freedom of the Old West often had a sheriff who “tamed the town” by locking up everyone’s pistols in the local jail.

JOHN STODDARD

Sunnymead