‘America’s Gun Epidemic’
* In response to “Taming the Monster: Get Rid of the Guns,” Dec. 28: As stated by this editorial, the whole answer to our nation’s crime and homicide problem is to get rid of guns. Personally, I think it is absurd.
Look at just this past year; how many random shooting sprees there have been--from San Francisco to just recently in New York, where a gunman opened fire on innocent civilians. If just one of our many law-abiding citizens was concealing a weapon, the massacres could have ended before they started.
If responsible, educated, law-abiding gun owners give up their guns, no doubt their chance of becoming a statistic will increase dramatically.
RON DAUB
Woodland Hills
* We strongly support your stand on gun control. suggest that you take an additional step: Call for repeal of the anachronistic Second Amendment to the Constitution. Rather than go through the already well-researched and rehearsed reasons supporting repeal, we will content ourselves with noting that the Second Amendment can well be likened to the vermiform appendix in the human body. Both appendixes, human and political, while having served useful functions in the evolutionary and political past, now serve only as centers of danger and inflammation.
AUGUSTINE and HORACE GAIMS
Los Angeles
* You ask the question: Who could be against such measures as mandatory waiting periods, heavy taxes and limits on ammunition and restrictions on certain types of guns? I could! I am a law-abiding citizen who happens to enjoy shooting sports. Your editorial position continues to miss the point: Your virtually total ban on guns will only affect people like me and will not reduce violent crime.
The only guns turned in under a total ban on private gun ownership will be by citizens like myself. The criminals who use guns to ply their trade will not be handing in theirs. The federal government has done a miserable job of controlling drug traffic (drugs are still the major cause of gang-related violence--hint, hint). How can they enforce a ban on guns carried by criminals?
MICHAEL E. SMITH
Placentia
* Your editorial does not go far enough. The government should immediately prohibit the sale of all handgun and assault weapon ammunition. This would prohibit the importation of these goods, and the manufacturing of them in the United States.
This would greatly shorten the “shelf life” of those weapons which are currently in the hands of those who use them to break the law, as well as those which cause accidents.
The Second Amendment clearly qualifies the right to bear arms as it relates to the security of a free state, and a well-regulated militia.
What the National Rifle Assn. has promoted has resulted in a non-regulated anarchy which threatens not only the security of our free states, but the militias (police) of those free states as well.
When the constitutional rights of the few who own ammunition plants meet head-on with the former rights of the many thousands killed by the bullets they make, is there any question as to whose rights should be curtailed until a better solution is found?
DAVID V. SHEEHAN II
San Clemente
* Your implicit editorializing on the positions that armed criminals can be trusted to turn in their guns, and that otherwise law-abiding citizens who don’t should be imprisoned, is thoroughly asinine.
THOMAS R. KRAG
Arcadia
* I feel that you avoid the problem. Your proposal deals with those who seek to buy guns legally. The problem does not lie with law-abiding citizens, though they do account for a minute portion of gun-related deaths. The problem lies with the underground--the criminal element. What needs to be done is enactment of tougher laws on gun dealers and also on those caught with guns that were illegally obtained. There are many different opposing arguments to gun control, one of the most important being the constitutional defense. But it primarily comes down to whether or not we, as a people, are going to allow ourselves to be armed against those who choose to violate our property, our family, our society, and fundamentally, our freedom.
WILLIAM PERALES
Cerritos
* Kudos for the revealing series, “America’s Gun Epidemic.”
Finally Russia, the “evil empire,” accepts the futility of an arms race with the U.S. and we can’t handle it. We start our own, as too many paranoid Americans rush to buy more guns under the guise of protection. Can’t they understand that if the money used to buy these guns was donated to law enforcement professionals it would go a long way toward solving escalating crime tragedies?
BOB GINN
Santa Clarita