Who gets the gun control?

Re “Let gun makers take a shot at it,” Opinion, June 29

Jeffrey Fagan and Stephen D. Sugarman have found the solution to gun violence and maybe every other social ill in our country. They want to make the gun industry responsible for the 12,000 annual firearm deaths. If gun makers didn’t reduce violence, they would be fined, taxed or somehow made to pay.

This idea could be applied to almost everything. We could make doctors and hospitals responsible for illness. They would have a fixed period in which to reduce, say, cancer by 50%. If they failed, they would pay. This could work for car manufacturers too.

The only problem with this moronic idea is that doctors, car manufacturers and gun makers have no control over the reckless and illegal behavior of their customers. Maybe Congress should require newspapers to print fewer moronic articles. We’ll see how that works out.

Knute Johnson

Gorman, Calif.

Fagan’s and Sugarman’s suggestion to make gun manufacturers “own” the problem of gun deaths raises unsettling questions. Their plan to “align the gun companies’ interests with the public interest” is well meaning, but is it really sensible to hold gun manufacturers responsible for failed public policy in, for example, education, urban planning and immigration? Should gun companies really be responsible for our society’s preference for using violence to solve disputes?

Remember, it’s a very similar liberal mind-set that still refuses to hold educators responsible for student learning, has little of note to say about urban ghettos, refuses to acknowledge our borders’ integrity and sees political correctness starting in elementary school as the way to make us all tolerant.

The root causes of gun violence may be in similarly sad statistics for drug use, criminal practices, fractured families and high incarceration rates, functional illiteracy, intolerance or ghettoization. Fixing these public policy disasters might be a more productive path toward fewer gun deaths.

Marco D. Huesch

Los Angeles

Fagan and Sugarman suggest better gun locks and other physical design changes to reduce gun violence.

What wonderful ideas. Let’s have a gun company make handguns that weigh 25 pounds, are too big to conceal, fire only one shot and have a trigger guard with a 30-minute unlock delay. Then let’s make it the only gun authorized to be carried by L.A. cops and all California politicians and their bodyguards.

We’ll give it a 10-year trial. Surely, if such things are good enough for the public to defend itself, they ought to be good enough for public servants.

Roland Raab

Ogden, Utah

I live in San Francisco and am proud to be associated with the so-called values system we have here.

That said, “Let gun makers take a shot at it” is the worst thing I have ever read in my entire life.

I could go on and explain point by point why my opinion is justified, but I won’t. I depend on people like editors at The Times to provide insight into world events and social issues. Please, get out of the office every once in a while.

Dunning Butler

San Francisco