Buyer Checks at Gun Shows

One of the many simplistic incantations of the National Rifle Assn., “If guns are controlled, only criminals will have guns,” exemplifies the unmitigated hypocrisy of those gun devotees as they vehemently protest gun-buyer background checks at gun shows (or anywhere), thus assuring that criminals will indeed have guns.

ILENE BRISKIN

Beverly Hills

* I have been among the first to criticize some of Michael Ramirez’s political cartoons, and I would like to be among the first to praise his depiction of a GOP gun (June 22). The cartoon that shows how my Republican Party is committing suicide has already found its spot on my refrigerator door.

CAROL ANN

DENNEY HOWARD

Huntington Beach

* With all the words written and spoken about the Littleton tragedy and gun control, one important point has been missed.

None of the legislative measures proposed by the Democrats would have prevented the Littleton massacre. The laws proposed are the same ragbag of measures Democrats have been pushing for years--trigger locks, magazine bans, gun show restrictions. The closest any of the proposed laws came to addressing Littleton was a problematic ban on the possession of assault guns (for which there still is no satisfactory definition) by minors. And who of us honestly thinks that law, had it been enacted earlier, would have deterred Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris?

Indeed, something should be done. But “gun control” (at least as presently conceived and proposed) certainly isn’t it.

ROBERT L. ARCHIBALD

La Verne

* I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the same Congress that gave us 13 months of the idiotic impeachment soap opera voted against gun control legislation. It’s no wonder kids have no sense of right from wrong, or value for life, when their own representatives think that profits for the gun industry and a handful of gun show nuts are more important than the lives of 5,000 children who die from bullets each year.

Ironically, many of these same legislators got into office on a pro-life platform. I guess right to life doesn’t include the children in our ghettos and barrios who die every day for standing in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

ALAN SALAPA

Ojai

* How about a regulation that requires representatives who vote on gun control to state at the time they cast their vote exactly how much money they have received from the National Rifle Assn.?

ELEANOR HALDANE

Anaheim