Editor,
After reading Professor Wadman’s March 20 guest commentary, “The Triumph of evil,” I have to make some comments.
Mr. Wadman’s 30 years of law enforcement is commendable and is his best asset in making his judgment call regarding a weapons ban. His being shot and having to deliver sad news of a person’s death is not a qualification. It only raises emotion in the reader. After 24 years, and still counting, in law enforcement, I must be just about equally qualified as Mr. Wadman when it comes to experience, albeit, I’ve never been a chief.
Mr. Wadman further plays on emotion as he mentions that guns are responsible for killing about 30,000 people every year, but fails to mention that about
two-thirds of those deaths are suicides. I don’t know what his experience has shown, but mine shows that suicide by gunshot usually requires only one round. So banning assault weapons will not stop the carnage. He, of all people, should know that guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Explosive devices have been illegal for longer than just about anyone who is alive today, but banning bombs does not stop humans from using them to kill other people. Of all the incidents of mass murder in this country, the largest losses to human life, in a single criminal episode, have been committed by using some type of explosive device, not guns. Two events in our history (Oklahoma City and 9/11), claimed 2,921 human lives. However, since 1982, 62 mass shootings have claimed 501 lives. The common denominator in all of the deaths was human initiative. To blame inanimate objects for the cause of human action is specious.
David Wakefield
Syracuse
Comments