2 Japanese Students Slain

* In response to “2 Students Shot During Carjacking Die,” March 28:

A conundrum? If indeed Japan does not have “guns on the streets” and “problems like this,” the reason can be found in the responses of Takuma Ito’s and Go Matsuura’s parents to their sons’ violent death. Instead of raging and striking out in retaliation, they expressed “no bitterness” and were “grateful for the good experiences their sons had here.”

You and I know that we did not pull this trigger but, even so, we want to apologize. It was with these parents’ responses that healing began.

We are not as a society taught to take responsibility for our experience and to move on; to respond gratefully for our present good. This does not mean we cannot work to create justice for all and to correct wrongs. Somehow along the line, however, we learn to expect “it all” and to react with righteous or violent indignation when it isn’t handed to us easily.

Instead of ethics, morals, patience, integrity--basis for clear thinking--we are handing our brothers and sisters anger, resentment and guns. If we could give them jobs, self-esteem, the ability to forgive, we would have people like Ito’s and Matsuura’s parents in our schools, at our workplace and on our streets.

It is not too late!

WESLEY W. STAPLES

Los Angeles

* Do you want to stop carjackings? There is a simple, effective and inexpensive way of doing just that. Liberalize concealed weapon permit laws to allow law-abiding citizens the right to protect themselves. The number of violent crimes in Florida dropped substantially when they did.

DANIEL HORTON

Chino Hills

* Regarding your editorial “Gunning Down a Civilization,” March 29:

Unfortunately, it will probably take a decline in tourism dollars from civilized, non-gun-toting countries like Japan, before our legislators wake up to the fact that this carnage must stop.

These economics will force our politicians to then admit that the National Rifle Assn. represents only a vocal minority of this country’s citizenry, and that meaningful consistent gun control must be enacted.

In the meantime, we should probably steel ourselves that it’s going to cost 15,000 lives a year until this inevitable realization results in a law banning handguns.

STEVEN SCHILLING

Palm Desert

* Your editorial quotes Ambassador Walter Mondale that “such crimes do not represent everyday American life.”

I calculate the numbers for 1992 as: 15,377 gun murders divided by 365 days divided by 50 states equals 0.84 murders per day per state in 1992.

Since the rate is on the rise, my guess is that we have already passed the “one murder per day per state” mark. That makes murder by gun a fact of “everyday American life.” (And that is ignoring murders which do not involve a gun.)

We decry the caning of an American teen-ager in Singapore, yet we are incapable of controlling graffiti in our own cities. We are willing to invade Panama, shoot down Serbian aircraft and disarm the Somalians, yet we are incapable of protecting foreign tourists and students on our own streets.

We rejoice at the collapse of European communism and demand improved human rights in China; while at the same time children die daily from preventable diseases and our streets swell with the unemployed homeless.

As a nation, we are immoral, arrogant, hypocritical and self-righteous. Were it not for our tremendous military power, the world would have long ago have isolated us as a pariah unfit for membership in the family of nations.

JANE KNOX

Capistrano Beach

* Isn’t it sad that the only carjacking case to get attention from “elite detectives” and the FBI is the one that kills people from another country? The action taken by our city’s leaders sends the citizenry of Los Angeles a clear message: Unless a criminal act in our city makes the top of another country’s evening news, it’s just another day in the city. Mayor Riordan, did you think Los Angeles could gain notoriety for something besides crime?

JACK CUSICK

Long Beach

* The tragic loss of those two young Japanese students is heartbreaking. To be so young and die so senselessly is truly a loss to this world. But I can’t help but feel that Japan shares partial responsibility for their deaths. Japan has constantly refused to allow equal trade and has led the rest of Asia in systematically destroying manufacturing jobs in the U.S. This has caused the loss of millions of jobs here in America and we have seen the rapid rise of crime as a result. You want to decrease crime? Increase the number of good, old factory jobs and crime will do down.

KEVIN P. LAMAN

La Mesa