Gun Ownership and Murders
In response to your editorial, “Gunning Down a Civilization,” March 29:
I was also sickened by the murder of the Japanese students, but I was also sickened by The Times’ editorial calling for more senseless gun laws. The entire editorial criticized gun ownership, yet spent no time criticizing the criminal who committed the murder or calling for the capital punishment that murderers deserve.
The Times stated that “respect for life crosses cultures and oceans--or at least it should.” The one thing that The Times needs to understand is that most of our nation’s firearm-related crime is concentrated in urban areas where there is a large and distinct gang and criminal culture that has little regard for life. That is where The Times needs to focus its energies. The true problem lies with the criminals who could murder two people for a short ride in a car and think nothing of it. Until these individuals who culturally have no respect for life are permanently removed from our society the situation will not change. I will always respect firearms as tools to protect the lives and freedom of people that I care for, because I realize that there will always be people who have no respect for life and freedom.
MICHAEL THOMAS
El Toro
Our country can be like Japan. Our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including your precious freedom of speech, need to be thrown out the door completely!
ED WOO
Long Beach
The highlight of a recent trip to Washington was discovering what Thomas Jefferson had written about the Constitution he helped draft. There it was on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial and, among other things, should give pause to the gun lobby and the lawmakers who support them. He wrote:
“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in law and constitutions but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
LOU BOCK
Los Angeles