Gun Control

I would like to challenge several points made by Ron Smith in his column about gun ownership and gun control laws ( "Face the facts: Gun control laws don't save lives," Jan. 20). He disparages several "Democratic bastions" as being unrealistic as far as their attitude toward gun ownership and gun control laws. However statistics show that states with higher gun ownership and weak gun laws lead the nation in gun deaths rates per 100,000 people. For example Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi and Nevada have household gun ownership rates from 31.5 percent to 60.6 percent and gun death rates of 16.25 per 100,000 to 19.58 per 100,000.

Shame on The Sun throwing away its credibility on editorials such as "License to kill" (March 23). The Sun seems to have jumped on the bandwagon of emotion and hype regarding Florida's gun laws. Like most anti-gun media, you use certain phrases and words to generate emotional responses while ignoring the facts because the facts refute your views. Unfortunately, most liberal anti-gun advocates refuse to use hard facts and data and will revert to the most emotional issues every time.

A recent poll shows National Rifle Association members overwhelmingly favor closing the gun show loophole, and that has the NRA fuming. Never mind that the poll was conducted by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who is on Fox News so often that he may as well be considered a network personality. Or that the same poll shows NRA members do support many pro-Second Amendment positions (against a national gun registry, for example). Once again, the NRA's leadership is out of step - not only with average Americans but even with people who identify themselves as NRA members.

A recent op-ed piece by Frimin DeBrabander ("America: armed and dangerous," March 28) cannot go without response. Mr. DeBrabander bewails the Arizona bill that would permit people to carry firearms on college campuses and asks, "Feeling safer yet?" I respond, "absolutely. " In Mr. DeBrabander's world, gun control laws, currently woefully unsuccessful in preventing criminals from obtaining and using guns in the commission of a crime but denying law-abiding citizens their constitutional right to do so, simply need to be multiplied rather than enforced.

Ron Smith, in his rush to defend lax gun laws ( "Face the facts: Gun control laws don't save lives," Jan. 22) appears to have stumbled on his own reasoning when he pointed out that Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords also owned a Glock like the one used in the assassination attempt. What good did her Glock do her? Was she able to protect herself or any other victims? If neither she nor the assassin had access to such lethal weapons, would not many of lives have been saved? It appears that many advocates for lax gun laws ignore the obvious: A handgun is an offensive and not a defensive weapon.

The politicians, pundits and public will debate until we're blue in the face about who is to blame for the tragedy in Tucson, Ariz., and like the political discourse of the past decade, there will be no winners. What is not debatable is the fact that if Jared Lee Loughner hadn't been able to purchase a Glock 19 semiautomatic handgun with four magazines capable of holding 33 rounds, there would be six fewer lives lost to handgun violence and 14 fewer injured. As long as our country allows lax laws governing the ownership of handguns, the American people must take collective responsibility for these deaths.

Every year some 25,000 Americans are killed in firearms-related homicides. This figure has helped make the U.S. one of the world's most violent countries -- so much so that it ought to be obvious that fewer gun-related homicides would occur if there were fewer guns floating around.Yet such has been the relentless barrage of misinformation from the gun lobby that even this simple truth has become shrouded in a cloud of self-serving propaganda. That is why a study by University of Maryland researchers, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, comes as a much-needed antidote.

Saying gun control is a high-priority moral issue, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced yesterday that hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics will be recruited to pressure the General Assembly to clamp down on the sale of firearms in Maryland.Auxiliary Bishop John H. Ricard said a new poll shows that most of the state's Catholics strongly favor stricter gun controls. He said the archdiocese believes that restricting the availability of weapons is a moral and practical necessity."Our pastors find increasingly that they can't hold church meetings at night, can't let children play outside, that it's not safe to have festivals," the bishop said at a news conference in a Southwest Baltimore church hall.

Gov.-elect Parris N. Glendening unveiled an array of proposals yesterday aimed at curbing crime, but said the stiff gun-control measures he promised as a candidate will have to wait, given the current mood of the public and the legislature.In presenting his first policy proposals since winning the Nov. 8 election, Mr. Glendening said he will push legislation that would:* Speed up death penalty appeals in order to "accelerate retribution" -- an idea rejected by lawmakers this past legislative session.

THE signing of the Brady bill last week was a high gala at the White House East Room. The Marine Band, tears, mayors, police chiefs, James and Sarah Brady, gracious as ever at a long-delayed triumph, were all present.A huge send-off for such a modest response to 70 million handguns, you would say. The things the bill won't do have been widely noted. The disarmament of America is a long way off. But it has begun, and that is worth celebrating.Says Spurgeon Kenny, president of the Arms Control Association, who busies himself with trying to coax countries to give up their nukes, "The significance is that it shows you can do something that the NRA doesn't want."

From the very first paragraph ("America: armed and dangerous," March 28), the tone and bias of the author's mindset was clearly anti-gun, and that is OK. However, like so many other anti-gun types in the U.S. he is much on rhetoric and little on facts, which is highly irregular since the author is an academic himself and therefore should know the value of facts and data over emotion. Unfortunately, the author has fallen for the same word games that for many began with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

In an attempt to capitalize on the tragic event in Arizona, the Maryland Legislature has decided that placing more restrictions on law abiding citizens who already must negotiate a labyrinth of complicated gun laws would somehow reduce crime. House Bill 330 seeks to reduce the maximum capacity of a firearm's magazine to the arbitrary number of 10 rounds. Instead of making us safer, this bill would accelerate the devastation of our economy by driving out local manufacturers, such as Beretta, who could no longer make magazines of standard capacity (standard capacity of a handgun magazine is between 12 and 17 rounds for most handguns and 30 rounds for the country's most popular rifle, the AR-15)

President Barack Obama's speech in Tucson last month and others' eloquent calls for civility since have been heartening. It seems de rigueur these days to call for "bipartisanship. " However, good intentions and individual commitments to behave better can — like New Year's resolutions — fade quickly. We need to employ proven approaches that foster sustained civility and actually bring results on key national issues. And not only elected leaders must make this commitment.

While President Barack Obama is urging Americans to focus on "winning the future" with talk of job-creating innovation in the spirit of John F. Kennedy's "Sputnik moment," he has been conspicuously silent on a pressing issue of the present. Though in his State of the Union address he lamented last month's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson, and lauded the heroic acts of those who prevented worse damage, he had nothing to say about the assault weapon used by the shooter.

Gun control policies should focus on restricting access to firearms for dangerous individuals or repeat offenders rather than making guns illegal, a prominent gun policy scholar told a group of public health students on Tuesday. Daniel W. Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, touched on Baltimore police tactics and the Jan. 8 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., where six people were killed and 13 wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

I would like to challenge several points made by Ron Smith in his column about gun ownership and gun control laws ( "Face the facts: Gun control laws don't save lives," Jan. 20). He disparages several "Democratic bastions" as being unrealistic as far as their attitude toward gun ownership and gun control laws. However statistics show that states with higher gun ownership and weak gun laws lead the nation in gun deaths rates per 100,000 people. For example Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi and Nevada have household gun ownership rates from 31.5 percent to 60.6 percent and gun death rates of 16.25 per 100,000 to 19.58 per 100,000.

Havre de Grace.-- Here we go again. The Maryland legislature, hammering away happily on the gun-control wedge, is deepening ancient rifts and alienating great groups of Marylanders one from the other. The same process is going on in other states.Perhaps more than any other issue on the political agenda, even including abortion, gun control divides Americans by culture. This makes for colorful demagoguery and exciting debates, adds vitality to public life, and eventually may strengthen the country.

Ron Smith, in his rush to defend lax gun laws ( "Face the facts: Gun control laws don't save lives," Jan. 22) appears to have stumbled on his own reasoning when he pointed out that Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords also owned a Glock like the one used in the assassination attempt. What good did her Glock do her? Was she able to protect herself or any other victims? If neither she nor the assassin had access to such lethal weapons, would not many of lives have been saved? It appears that many advocates for lax gun laws ignore the obvious: A handgun is an offensive and not a defensive weapon.

I wasn't surprised to see letters to the editor about last week's column from people who cling to their heartfelt notion that if we just had more sensible gun control laws, the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that resulted in six deaths earlier this month might not have happened. My comments on the rush to condemn Sarah Palin and conservative commentators for somehow encouraging the alleged gunman by fostering a "climate of hate" made no mention of the gun issue.However, just as the commentariat on the left couldn't resist trying to tie its political opponents to the Tucson massacre, however farfetched the hypothesis, so too are the believers in gun-control laws unable to avoid trotting out their discredited theories - the ones rebuffed by reality and rejected by voters outside of Democratic bastions like New York, California and, yes, Maryland.