Handguns Are Effective Means of Self-Defense

Don’t believe for a second that police officer Jeri Weinstein has concern for the safety and well-being of the law-abiding citizen as the motive for her Jan. 28 Valley Perspective column, “Empower the Police to Take Back the Streets.” While requesting that citizens empower police to take back the streets (Did they ever have them?), she dares to strongly suggest that those same citizens should not own one of the most effective forms of self-defense, handguns. She advises against gun ownership by having us believe that the average criminal is far superior to us. And since, in her opinion, we don’t stand a chance against this superman, we should just accept our fate unarmed. She condescendingly adds that citizens owning handguns can’t be trusted to control their emotions and that the mere availability of a gun is enough to cause us to shoot someone who wrecks our car in a traffic accident. She names the gun as the culprit instead of the unstable personality that wouldn’t let lack of a gun deter him and would happily use a tire iron instead.

She also avoids mentioning that one of criminals’ biggest fears is the armed citizen.

In Weinstein’s world, only police, not citizens, should have guns. Unfortunately, criminals already have, or would easily acquire, weapons. Her ludicrous ideas have only one inevitably grim result: an armed police state, armed criminals and unarmed citizens at the mercy of both.

BRUCE EDELMAN

North Hollywood