Inner-City Violence and Gun Control

I read The Times’ July 17 editorial on the crime bill with interest and concern. While I applaud your warnings against limiting the right to appeal and the dangers of an expanded RICO Act, your comments on the firearms provisions were depressing.

It is ironic that those responsible for protecting society from the poison of criminal gangs, their activities and their wares are now reacting to their palpable failures by ignoring the Constitution and imposing an indiscriminate gun ban on the law-abiding public. (For if semi-automatic firearms can be prohibited by act of Congress, so can any other class of weapon, and what has been heretofore a right is relegated by the powers that be to the status of privilege to be granted or taken away as they see fit.) Apparently, both they and you are confident that those so bold in the traffic of illegal drugs will shrink away from smuggling proscribed firearms.

The Second Amendment was not written for the sake of trivial diversions and “sporting purposes,” but in recognition of the dangers posed by predatory criminals and tyrannical governments.

CHARLES WILSON HEWGILL

Anaheim