‘Gun Control Gets a Boost’

I was amused and disturbed by the attitude expressed in your editorial “Gun Control Gets a Boost” (June 28). Amused that you would use anything that President Reagan says as the centerpiece of your argument, disturbed that you seem to feel that prohibitions work. As stated in your editorial: “Only a comprehensive ban on handgun purchases and ownership would prevent guns from falling into criminal hands. . . .”

The ban you are suggesting would make all owners of handguns criminals. Like drug prohibition and its precursor, alcohol prohibition, gun prohibition should make organized crime very happy.

After all the evidence to the contrary, do you still believe you can legislate human behavior?

Can you really be so naive as to believe that criminalizing guns will stop their creation and distribution? And if your cure-all ban were enacted, do you suppose that the multimillion handguns already owned and circulating would just disappear? Or perhaps that all current gun owners would see the error of their ways and trundle on down to the local weapon receptacle and throw in their $500 pistols.

Will we be safer when the military in the form of the police begin conducting house-to-house sweeps in search of illegal weapons? Will we live under higher standards when we all become criminals due to legislation designed to protect us from ourselves? Will total criminalization finally make us equal?

The law you appear to favor will not disarm the public, it will just make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens. It will not make society safer, it will only serve to make us more paranoid about our position in a dangerous society under the control of a government run rampant. The only ones to benefit from your ban are the ones who benefit from all new legislation, the lawyers.

CRAIG SIMMONS

Van Nuys