Gun Violence

A 20-year-old cousin of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was one of two men fatally shot in separate incidents Wednesday night in Baltimore, the latest victims of the city's relentless pace of gun violence. Joseph Haskins, 20, was shot inside a house just blocks from his family's home in the Northwest Baltimore neighborhood of Forest Park. Police said the shooting appeared to be the result of home invasion robbery, but detectives still were investigating. They said it was unclear whether Haskins was targeted.

In reference to "Harford County Council passes resolution condemning state gun law" (May 15), the article quotes a Harford County councilman who questioned the objectivity of gun policy research at Johns Hopkins University because New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a major benefactor. I direct the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and have been conducting research on gun policy for the past 23 years. Over this time, I have led numerous studies related to gun violence and published the results in 78 articles in scientific journals.

Gov. Martin O'Malley on Thursday signed a gun-control bill that is among the country's most sweeping legislative responses to the December mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. The law bans the sale of assault-style rifles, including the AR-15 used in the Newtown killing of six educators and 20 first- and second-graders. The law limits gun ownership for people with mental illness, outlaws the sale of high-capacity magazines and establishes the nation's first new handgun licensing scheme in two decades.

Editor: In response to "Harford County Council passes resolution condemning state gun law" (May 15th, 2013): The article quotes a Harford County Councilman who questioned the objectivity of gun policy research at Johns Hopkins University because New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a major benefactor.  I direct the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, and have been conducting research on gun policy for the past 23 years....

As Christians concerned about the level of gun violence in our city, we can no longer sit in silence. Our community grieves the deaths of new victims of gun violence every week. It is time to act. We urge our neighbors to speak out loud and clear in support of Maryland House Bill 294, the Firearm Safety Act. This bill must continue to include the fingerprinting and licensing of handgun purchasers in order to reduce "straw purchases" of guns in our state. Now is the time to call your Maryland delegates.

I would like to ask our lawmakers to have courage when it comes to the gun debate. Courage is a difficult thing at times, especially in times of heated emotional debate. I hope that our legislators will have courage to reject both the NRA's call to do nothing and Gov. Martin O'Malley's call to infringe on law abiding gun owners' rights. I hope that they will have the courage to look at the all of the data and make a decision based on that. It takes courage to look at data that might prove your ideas wrong, and it takes a lot of courage to admit you were wrong.

People across the political spectrum acknowledge that no one knows exactly what policies or programs would substantially reduce individual gun deaths and mass killings. Without well-conducted research, we will never find out. As a physician, I applaud President Barack Obama for his executive action restoring permission for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on ways to reduce gun violence. This action removes legal barriers to systematic studies of the multiple contributors to gun-related deaths and injuries and the effects of violence in media including video games.

Gun control will not work. When one matches FBI crime statistics with the states that have the most restrictive gun laws, one finds that nearly all the most restrictive states have the highest number of murders by firearms. This proves beyond doubt that gun control legislation increases the number of murders by firearms. Barry Rohder, Germantown Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

To those opposed to tougher Maryland gun laws, I can only say that we have to start somewhere ("Battle lines form in gun debate," Dec. 19). The answer cannot be that criminals will get guns anyway so law-abiding people must have them as well to protect themselves. We are living in a society where the character and moral differences between the good guys and the bad guys are blurring. The country is awash in paranoia and fear. The reasons for the good guys to be armed may be purer and nobler than the reasons for the bad guys.

Kudos to Dan Rodricks and The Sun for your coverage of last month's tragedy involving innocent victims of the proliferation of guns in the U.S. You stepped forward with not only the horrific facts of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings but were unrelenting in your attack on the National Rifle Association and legislators who are determined to keep weapons in the hands every criminally insane young man bent on wreaking havoc in our communities....

Gov. Martin O'Malley on Thursday signed a gun-control bill that is among the country's most sweeping legislative responses to the December mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. The law bans the sale of assault-style rifles, including the AR-15 used in the Newtown killing of six educators and 20 first- and second-graders. The law limits gun ownership for people with mental illness, outlaws the sale of high-capacity magazines and establishes the nation's first new handgun licensing scheme in two decades.

A 20-year-old cousin of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was one of two men fatally shot in separate incidents Wednesday night in Baltimore, the latest victims of the city's relentless pace of gun violence. Joseph Haskins, 20, was shot inside a house just blocks from his family's home in the Northwest Baltimore neighborhood of Forest Park. Police said the shooting appeared to be the result of home invasion robbery, but detectives still were investigating. They said it was unclear whether Haskins was targeted.

Nobody blames cars for drunk driving, so why do some people blame firearms for gun violence? Might the term "gun violence" be more indicative of a deep, irrational fear of an inanimate object? W.J. Cooper, Salisbury Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

I am ashamed to find out that the U.S. Senate has voted to oppose minimal, common-sense gun control legislation ("Defeat leaves gun control backers at a loss for strategy," April 19). Thankfully, both of our Maryland senators supported these measures, while 46 senators, including 90 percent of Republicans, opposed requiring criminal background checks on sales at gun shows and online. Even more elected officials opposed banning assault weapons or large-scale ammunition magazines.

One sign of being crazy is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Allowing guns to proliferate on our streets repeatedly has resulted in violence against innocent people, but given the opportunity to do something different, the U.S. Senate has settled on more of the same - which is nothing ("Senate rejects expanded checks on gun purchases," April 18). The senators who voted against a sane revision of gun laws dishonored the memory of those slaughtered in Columbine, Aurora, Tucson, Newtown and all those who continue to be slaughtered every day on streets everywhere across this country.

Your recent editorial correctly pointed out that because Marylanders overwhelmingly support Gov. Martin O'Malley's gun legislation, voters almost certainly would approve it if it were petitioned to a referendum in 2014 ("Make our day," April 9). However, a successful referendum petition would delay the date when the law goes into effect by 15 months and thus postpone its life-saving impact by a similar period. We need to start as soon as possible implementing the law's fingerprinting and licensing requirements for handgun purchases, which is the state's most effective tool for reducing gun violence and saving lives.

As we continue to feel sad about the deaths of the 3,000 people killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001, we need to be saddened as well by the deaths of more than 10 times that many individuals killed every year by gun violence in the United States. Firearms kill more than 30,000 people every year in the U.S. In 2007, the latest figure available from the Centers for Disease Control, 31,224 people died from gun injuries. As cartoonist Gary Trudeau pointed out in a February "Doonesbury" strip, since the terrorist attacks of 2001 some 270,000 Americans have been killed by gun violence.

They started out with a lot in common -- Joe Manchin and Patrick Toomey. Sure, one's a Democrat and one's a Republican, but they're both conservatives, both longtime gun owners and both sport an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association. But now the two senators share a bigger honor. In the long-lost, problem-solving spirit of the U.S. Senate, the Democrat from West Virginia and the Republican from Pennsylvania have come together to forge a compromise on background checks that promises to break the logjam against any reasonable gun safety legislation.

The Maryland House passed the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 by a vote of 78 to 61 ("House passes gun control," April 4). The bill bans the sale or transfer of semiautomatic rifles and limits magazine capacity. Once signed by the governor, the law goes into effect on October 1. There are only seven states in America that have any restrictions on magazine capacity. Gun owners are free to purchase 100-round magazines in any of the other 43 states that respect gun rights. Those opposed to gun ownership know that gun owners will become politically active if they call for total bans on all firearms.