Brady Gun Bill Passes in House

So what is all this celebrating about? Calling the Brady bill’s passage (front page, May 9) a victory of gun control over the dominance of the National Rifle Assn. is like reveling in a 12-1 Dodger loss because Darryl Strawberry hit a solo homer. Nothing has been won.

The infestation of our society with weapons of war continues unabated. Munitions manufacturers in this country are permitted, if not encouraged, to spew out mechanical killers as though they were producing dolls. And each time they seal and wrap one of their toys, they seal a piece of our security with it. True, those affected most are at the bottom of our social strata, and their body count is little more than a filler for the six o’clock news.

The bumper-sticker mentality, which argues that criminals would find some other way to get their guns if gun control laws were in place, never seems to address the issue of where those guns came from in the first place.

It is true that there are so many weapons in circulation that it would be a monumental task to restrict and recover them to the point of genuine control.

In 14 years as a policeman, I went to the funerals of nine of my colleagues, all victims of commercially manufactured guns. I have spent the past six years as a high school teacher in Los Angeles at a school with a population of less than 200. To date, eight of my former students have been murdered with guns. A ninth lies in deep coma, the result of a gunshot wound.

There are many other things wrong with the way we live together, but I cannot believe that history would not have been altered for these and so many others, had we not begun 20 years ago what we simply must begin today. On behalf of my student and his family, I ask that we start now.

WILLIAM A. ROSSBACH

Los Angeles