Editor,
The writer of the Feb. 17 letter, “Only military need high firepower weapons,” stated that the Second Amendment is outdated and should be changed, claiming our Founding Fathers could not have visualized the firearms of our day. Using this same logic, would he also have the First Amendment changed seeing the fathers surely couldn’t have visualized our rapidly changing high-speed means of communication?
The writer is right about one thing: when one firearm is restricted, criminals and the criminally insane will turn to another firearm, explosive, flammable, or even an automobile to enact their evil.
The anti-gun media has attached the “assault rifle” name to AR-15-type rifles as another way of intimidating the uninformed. Adam Lanza could have committed this massacre with most shotguns, rifles, or handguns available to the public. It should be remembered that schools are not really “gun free zones.” A better name would be: “defenseless victim zones.” The massacre at Sandy Hook School could have ended a lot differently if that courageous principal and staff had the opportunity to be armed.
The letter writer feels that more restrictions on gun shows would stop the illegal firearm trade between the United States and Mexican drug cartels, saving thousands of lives. Agent Brian Terry and many Mexicans would be alive today were it not for Eric Holder and Obama’s shameful scheme entitled “Fast and Furious” which they tried to dismiss as a means of stopping the illegal flow of firearms. The true purpose of “Fast and Furious” was to discredit honest gun dealers and thus effectuate more restrictive laws.
Cleaning up the Obama administration will be more effective and fiscally sound than creating more restrictive gun laws that do nothing to remedy the actual problem.
Individual states need to find a better way of managing and treating the mentally ill. A 2000 New York Times study found 47 of the 100 studied mass murders were mentally ill. How many heinous crimes could have been prevented if these individuals had not been overlooked? Surely many of these would-be criminals exhibited signs of malady long before they became mass murderers.
Richard Whitehead
Ogden
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