Triggering a debate

Re “These people own guns?” Current, Aug. 13

After reading Jenny Price’s Op-Ed article, I could not help thinking that there are millions of doctors, lawyers, business owners and women who own guns. Most are not sitting around at 3 a.m. talking in chat rooms but are sleeping so we can go to our jobs or take care of our children the next day. We support the 2nd Amendment and believe in an individual’s right to possess firearms, but we express ourselves in a different fashion. If Price wants to see a cross section of gun owners, she should visit a gun range; she would be surprised at the variety she would find.

MICHAEL L. FRIEDMAN

Torrance

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Price has a unique take on intolerance. According to her, firearms kill 12,000 people a year, and 40 million people own handguns. The math works out to, at most, three-thousandths of 1% of the handguns are involved in the death of a person. Her solution is to outlaw the 99.9997% not involved. Price labels those who disagree as so unreasonable that it is scary they have guns. Even the minority of gun owners who spoke of her so uncouthly tolerated her having the right to think and say as she did. She should be so tolerant toward the millions who disagree with her.

JAMES J. WAGNER

Cypress

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I know firsthand how rabid and illogical gun advocates can be, having grown up in a household fanatically opposed to any gun control. My dad and his friends maintained a ludicrous fantasy that their possession of guns was in some way preventing a foreign invasion or discouraging some sort of internal coup. This fear enabled them to rationalize twisting the Constitution to support the absurd idea that everyone should be entitled to own a lethal weapon.

Guns have no place in an advanced society, and Price’s experience clearly shows that Americans are far from maturing to a level where they can let go of their pacifiers and security blankets.

LEE TRUMBLE

Oxnard