To the Editor:
In “The
Hard Work of Gun Control” (editorial, July 11), you “strongly
disagreed” with Supreme Court decisions in 2008 and last month that
“people have a constitutional right to a gun in their home for
self-defense.”
The reality of our daily lives, as you acknowledge, is unfortunately
that “bullets are flying on city streets.” Criminals have guns, they
will use them to rob and kill, and law enforcement can act only after
the fact.
Regardless of one’s philosophical stance on this issue, we must each
take personal responsibility for our security, and allowing citizens to
arm themselves in self-defense is the only rational response to the
reality in which we live. To disarm citizens while criminals have guns
is illogical, unreasonable and contrary to our fundamental right of
self-preservation.
The hard work of gun control should be directed at criminals, not
citizens defending their lives and property.
Ladson H. Beach Jr.
Orangeburg, S.C., July 12, 2010
To the Editor:
In regard to the legal challenge to Chicago’s new gun ordinances, you
defined as “ludicrous” and “hypothetical” a man’s desire to defend his
elderly mother in her high-crime neighborhood home. But it is that very
scenario faced by Raymond Sledge, one of the plaintiffs in Benson v.
Chicago, which challenges Chicago’s new handgun regulations.
The defense that Mr. Sledge desires for himself and his mother is the
central component of the fundamental individual liberty protected by the
Second Amendment. Such a desire is hardly ludicrous and cannot be
diminished by the City of Chicago, or by the opinion of The New York
Times.
Carl Dick
Bowling Green, Ky., July 11, 2010
To the Editor:
A man walked into a New Mexico workplace on Monday with a gun. The
result: three dead, including the gunman, and four hospitalized.
Meanwhile, the gun lobby and its friends in Congress and on the Supreme
Court continue to create an environment for more and more such tragedies
based on an odd interpretation of the Second Amendment, which was
written specifically to ensure a well-regulated militia.
We have become the most violent nation in terms of gun deaths in the
developed world. While the carnage mounts, calls continue for more guns,
virtually everywhere, resulting, we are told, in less crime. Arm
everyone, says the National Rifle Association, for a safer society. It
is beyond paradox.
The bloodshed that each year takes nearly 30,000 lives, half of which
are suicides, will not be stemmed, but instead most likely will grow, as
long as a misguided love affair with firearms goes unchecked, and
politicians remain too fearful of reprisals by gun interests to do the
right thing.
Arnold Grossman
Denver, July 12, 2010
The writer is the author of “One Nation Under Guns: An Essay on an
American Epidemic.”
To the Editor:
Your editorial stated that the Supreme Court, in its 2008 Second
Amendment ruling, explicitly said that the right to possess a firearm
can be limited with reasonable restrictions. You added, “But it provided
very little guidance as to what is reasonable.”
The court did not use the word “reasonable” in its judgment but rather
defined the limitations through an explicit list, which arguably
provides considerable guidance.
Felons and the mentally ill can be denied weapons. The carrying of
concealed weapons can be prohibited. Laws imposing “conditions and
qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” are permitted. Forbidding
the carrying of firearms into “sensitive” places like schools and
government buildings is allowed. The carrying of “dangerous and unusual
weapons” may be prohibited.
True, there will be considerable litigation, particularly over the
specifics of the limitations on the commercial sale of arms and what
constitutes dangerous and unusual weapons. But reasonableness will be a
factor only as it is in any legal proceeding.
Paul M. Kintner Sr.
Hendersonville, N.C., July 12, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 