Murder Statistics

I read with amazement Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks’ claim (“There Must Be Outrage Over These Killer Weapons,” Commentary, Aug. 13) that compared to the 57,000 U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam, “from 1987 to 1997, nearly four times as many people (217,853)--mostly children--have been murdered on the streets of our cities.” The claim that most of our nation’s murder victims are children is completely and utterly false.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the nation’s official source of data on murder, in 1997, 87% of murder victims in the United States were 18 years of age or older. In fact, only 8.5% of murder victims were under 17 and less than 5% were under 13. Moreover, 1997 was not an unusual year in this respect: For every year between 1987 and 1997 80% or more of the murder victims in the U.S. were at least 20 years old.

The gun control debate in this country is too important to be influenced by such gross misstatements of facts.

JOSEPH M. BESSETTE

Claremont

* Why do the anti-gun-control forces insist on making comparisons between guns and other objects (letter, Aug. 13)? Sure, you can intentionally kill people with your car, or with a pair of scissors, a brick, or any number of other objects for that matter, but that is not why these objects are manufactured. Conversely, you could hammer a nail with a gun, but if the primary reason guns are created isn’t to fire a projectile into something or someone in order to injure or kill (or, in the case of semiautomatic weapons, lots of someones), then what is their purpose?

CARL D. RYKACZEWSKI

Palm Springs

* All future copies of the Constitution should be accompanied by the following warning label: “Caution! The 2nd Amendment may be hazardous to the health of children and all other living creatures.”

TOM RUSH

Orange