Thursday letters
Birth control, budgets, guns and more in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the day: Try to see the safety threat
The divisions in our society seem to leave us on opposite sides of an abyss, staring uncomprehendingly at the other side. So it is with guns.
Is it really impossible for us to agree on changes to make everyone safer?
Across the abyss, I see people who take any reform effort as an intolerable threat. Are you seriously prepared to defend your right to an assault weapon, with grenade-launcher and 100-round magazine, knowing you don’t need it, knowing it endangers other people’s lives?
The National Rifle Association narrative says any reform is an assault, not only on gun ownership, but on the Constitution. We who do not accept this narrative are baffled by its power. Background checks might keep some guns out of the wrong hands. Waiting periods might give potential suicides a chance to think twice. Having to reload might save lives when guns are fired in public places. Registering gun purchases might make tracing possible and discourage people from buying guns for others.
None of these changes takes your guns away or prevents you from hunting or shooting. None will magically fix all the problems. But why would you not allow us to try?
SUE WILLIAMS
ROANOKE
January 31, 2013 - 12:06 AM
Steven Kranowski in your LTE “‘Knives’ argument is pointless”
You made a good point,
“If Cozzette can be so kind as to point out any examples of a single person carrying out a mass clubbing or a driveby knifing, he might have a point. Otherwise, we’ll all just take his rhetoric for what it’s worth.”
Cozzette’s analogous comparisons reminds me of one I read years ago where a LTE writer used an Alligator in his tirade, e.g., why don’t we register alligators since they can be used to kill. Ignorance, or the lack of education, really comes to the surface with gun issues.