Taking a Hard Look at the Toll of Handguns, Tourism in O.C.

* Re: Japanese student carjacking.

I read with astonishment your front page quotation from the president of the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau (a.k.a. the Outrich Society): “We have to emphasize how safe Orange County is, and we have figures to back it up,” (“Another PR Nightmare for O.C.’s Tourist Trade,” March 30).

What figures could they be: that our per capita murder rate is lower than L.A.’s? That there are actually several million people still alive?

Give me a break. For example, I could have sworn Santa Ana was in Orange County; that quaint, charming village next to Disneyland, where so far in 1994 there have been almost as many street murders as all of Japan has in a year--and Japan has more than 150 times the population of Santa Ana.

The murder of the Japanese students in San Pedro is just one of several similar stories in our area this week, but it gets much added attention because of the international implications to the sacred tourist dollar.

The tourist and convention bureaus are wasting time trying to prove this county is “safer” than L.A. They should focus on the real problem: “It’s the guns, stupid.”

Americans, who otherwise seem rational, somehow cannot grasp a simple fact: Countries that have strict gun control have very few murders, while countries that allow free access to guns have a lot of murders.

When we finally rise up and demand national banishment of handguns and ammunition, the murder stories will diminish. Considering our legalistic mentality, this will not be easy, but life itself is getting less easy and more precarious, simply because we have failed to act.

Until we do, I would advise our Japanese friends to stay away; compared to their own and many other countries, this is a war zone.

JAY HERPEL

Fullerton

* I see that Supervisor Gaddi Vasquez is pushing for a “summit” to discuss ways to increase tourism in Orange County (“County Will Hold Summit on Tourism,” March 23).

He and his cohorts claim it will pump millions of dollars into the Orange County economy. Perhaps it will--into the pockets of hotel, restaurant and amusement owners--most of whom don’t even live in Orange County.

Any employment resulting from an increase in tourism is at the very lowest end of the pay scale: hotel maids, waitresses, busboys, teen-agers who work at amusement parks. They all get minimum wages, or less.

Result? More demand for illegal (immigrants) who will work for these wages, then send most of their pay back to Mexico, where it helps to sell our trade imbalance. And, with the increase in illegal (immigrants), we also get an increase in welfare costs of all kinds: Medi-Cal, police, fire, schools and direct welfare.

Maybe this is what Vasquez wants. But, it’s not good for Orange County. “Tourism” simply multiplies the problem that’s already strangling Orange County. Let’s make Orange County an attractive place for employers who are willing to pay decent wages and offer employment to the thousands of highly skilled Orange Countians who have lost their jobs due to defense cutbacks, downsizing, the recession and relocation of companies to a more favorable area.

STUART WILLIAMS

Newport Beach