‘Ignoring the Roots’

Your editorial says that President Bush’s package of crime-control measures is “puzzling” and “manages to be both reckless and timid at the same time” and ignores the “roots of crime.”

I had the same thoughts about your editorial.

Strangely, you believe that tougher sentences and more prisons for violent criminals arenot the answer. The answer, and apparently the “root” of the nation’s drug-related crime problems, you seem to imply, is actually guns, and specifically semiautomatic military-style “assault weapons.”

Ban these guns and the crime problems will disappear, your editorial implies.

How is “rational regulation” of military-style firearms--that is, as you have repeatedly called for in recent editorials, a ban on sale and harsh restrictions on legal possession--”guaranteed to reduce the level of criminal violence on America’s streets?”

And what is the basis for your statement that “semiautomatic assault weapons” were used “to kill many” of the 151 policemen killed in the line of duty in whose memory the gathering at which the President spoke was being held?

JAMES R. BENSON

El Toro