Readers React: Tragedy in Las Vegas

To the editor: Tuesday’s front-page piece (“A violent culmination,” June 10) on the Bonnie-and-Clyde-style Las Vegas libertarian killers Jerad Miller and Amanda Woodruff is accurate are far as it goes. But it leaves perhaps the most interesting question about this latest round of gun carnage unasked, uninvestigated and, of course, unanswered: How did a convicted felon get hold of not just one gun but several?

Why is it so easy to get a gun and go on a rampage in Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Mission Viejo, Seattle, North Hollywood or Newtown, Conn.? And why do major news sources focus too often on the shooters’ psyches and not nearly enough on the ready availability of guns?

Leigh Clark, Granada Hills

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To the editor: Near the end of your article on the Las Vegas shootings, you mention Joseph Robert Wilcox, who pulled out a concealed weapon and confronted Jerad Miller at the Wal-Mart.

As I read this part of the article, I wondered what gun advocates who promote the fallacy that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun would say about that. Wilcox may have believed this idea and might have wanted to be a hero, but now he is dead after having been shot by a bad guy.

Gun advocates think they know how any scenario involving guns will play out. They don’t.

Unfortunately, this part of the story will not even be part of the conversation. It is to our country’s detriment that it won’t be.

Nancy Zaman, Los Angeles

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To the editor: The Times smears libertarianism by associating it with the Millers, the deranged couple who killed two Las Vegas cops and a civilian.

The Times reports that Jerad Miller “had apparently been fantasizing about a libertarian armed revolution.” Just for the record, as a political philosophy, libertarianism stands for laissez-faire capitalism and an aggressive government role in fighting crime and violence, including killing police officers.

The Millers were not libertarians; they were psychopaths.

Al Ramrus, Pacific Palisades

To the editor: The politicians’ angry cries against the release of five Guantanamo Bay detainees are loud. What of the American terrorists who routinely slaughter children, police officers and innocent civilians?

Those politicians refuse to defy their sponsor, the National Rifle Assn., and show little care for American lives.

Ruth Palanker, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Isn’t it about time that we just stand up to the defenders of an amendment written more than 200 years ago and say it just doesn’t apply anymore? Isn’t it time for the cowards in Washington to quit protecting the NRA and start protecting the rest of us?

It’s time we closed the gun shops and the gun shows and started restricting and shutting down the manufacturers of these weapons.

And yes, it is a mental health issue. It’s about the absolute insanity of the people who think that owning a gun somehow makes you more of an American.

Collect the guns and get these nuts off the street before more of our children die.

Lee Cohen, Glendale