Hard Truths and Myths About Assault Weapons

Re “Bush’s Obstructionism,” editorial, Aug. 9: To read that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert are obstructing the vote to renew the assault gun ban pierces me to the core, as a mother who witnessed my two young sons fall victim to a person shooting an assault gun as we sought to leave the park after signing up my 7-year-old for the Youth Winter Basketball League. He was fatally wounded, with bullets having penetrated his right eye, cheek and the center of his forehead. My younger son, 10 months old at the time, sustained bullet fragment wounds to the right side of his nose and his left eye. He survived to endure the removal of his lens and receive a “buttonhole” cornea transplant, taking anti-rejection medication on a daily basis, regular hours of patching his uninjured eye to maintain sight in the left one, and living in the absence of his big brother who loved him so dearly. In spite of what has been dealt him, he is an excellent student. He is now 7.

Tell me, President Bush, Sen. Frist and Rep. Hastert, is this your answer to my son, seven years later, in addressing the gun violence epidemic in our country, that you are now going to open the floodgates for the sale and manufacturing of the very type of weapons that took his brother’s life and scarred him?

Rhonda Foster

Inglewood

I know how to get a 99.9% “yes” response on a question about gun control. You merely ask anybody “Are you in favor of a law that will keep dangerous guns out of the hands of criminals?” I also know a way to silence 100% of the lawmakers, activists and other believers in unicorns. You merely ask them, “Could you please define a law that will keep dangerous guns out of the hands of criminals?” The response would be universal silence, as there is not, never has been, nor ever will be such a law, and criminals do not obey laws.

Even the most ardent supporters of the assault gun ban admit that it has been totally ineffective, so why does The Times keep pushing the gun control myth?

Jerry Parsons

Long Beach