Debate Over Gun Control
In your June 13 editorial, “Shooting Holes in Gun Control,” your use of the term “nonsense” is misplaced. It is better applied to your own nonsensical belief that one more gun law will reduce crime. There are already laws against rape, murder, robbery, assault, the criminal use of guns, etc. And all are ignored by criminals. Nevertheless, The Times assures us that these new laws will be the ones that criminals obey. “What nonsense.”
STEVE BELL
Woodland Hills
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Why on Earth are you so worried about how many guns I might buy in one month? I’m N-O-T a criminal! Criminals do not go into gun shops to buy their guns. They break into homes or buy them from people who do not have a federal firearms license.
People who do have a license and sell to criminals “out the backdoor” are criminals themselves and should be put in jail. But expecting Bill Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to enforce the laws already on the books is like expecting my Chevy pickup to fly to the moon. It ain’t gonna happen.
EDWIN J. APPLE
Lakewood
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Once again the issue of gun control comes to the fore, and once again the debate sinks to the usual level of disinformation. While those on one side believe we can end violence by banning all weapons, those on the other believe that the ATF is on the verge of showing up at our locked doors demanding we turn in our weapons. Neither view is correct, of course.
Most alarming are the strident views of those who choose to paint our government as the enemy, instilling the less informed and more paranoid with fear and hatred. The rest of us must move ahead with reasonable regulations, as most Americans agree, and then move on with other issues.
BOB LOZA
Burbank
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Twenty thousand government gun laws haven’t stopped Americans from shooting one another. The only gun law that will stop gun violence in America is one allowing all trained, competent, non-felonious, adult, U.S. citizens to carry concealed weapons.
Here’s a novel idea: The government trusts Americans to do the right thing with their own guns. Washington officials might want to try this idea, now that all government plans for gun control have failed.
RICH KAPNICK
North Hollywood
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A quote from the 1975 World Book Encyclopedia, under gun control: “In the United States, more people have been killed by privately owned guns since 1900 than have died in all the wars in the nation’s history.” And that statistic is over 20 years old. Isn’t it enough already?
DAVID SAXON
Sherman Oaks