Would you have wanted a gun?

To the editor:

What happened in Connecticut is a travesty. No one will deny it, and I am sure we all pray for the families. But now we hear the anti-gun advocates talk about the need to rid society of guns, that they are the causes of these types of mass shootings and that we the people of the United States would be safer without guns. They wish to blame the NRA, the gun culture, the Second Amendment and others.

The blame lies with the crazy men who have committed these acts, and it lies in the laps of the people who make our laws, regulations and policies. These people are making decisions based on emotion and not on logic. They are reducing our ability to defend ourselves, thereby making it easier for us to be victimized.

In 1974, three terrorists broke into an Israeli school and killed 31 children and faculty. Israel did not respond by taking all guns away from the people of Israel. Instead, they armed and trained their teachers, and because of this Israel has not lost a single child within a school in the past 38 years. If our government, after Columbine, would have allowed teachers who were properly trained to arm themselves while at their work, Virginia Tech may have never happened, and this shooting in Connecticut might have never happened. There have now been three mass murders in U.S. schools – gun-free zones – in the past 13 years. How many mass murders have been committed inside a gun store?

Fortifying a school is not a deterrent, it is an obstacle. A criminal bent on killing will easily overcome any physical barrier, such as a locked door or reinforced glass. But very few criminals will attempt to defeat other armed persons to achieve their goals. Not all teachers want to carry a firearm, and that is understandable. No one should be forced to do so. But the bad guys will not know who is trained and carrying a gun. They will only know that there are trained and armed men and women inside willing to protect and defend themselves and the children.

Ask any of the teachers who were at that school, hiding in the closet, or in the bathroom stalls, or hunkered in the corner of their classrooms, if they would have been safer had they had the training and a gun to effectively protect themselves against this crazy man. Imagine yourself in that situation, hiding behind a toilet stall door. Would you want a gun in your hand and the proper training to use it? I would.

Most of us would not have an issue with placing an armed police officer inside of each school. Why should we have an issue with allowing our teachers to be trained and armed?

For the people who do not like the idea of having their children around guns, they can send their children to the gun-free schools and have them protected by reinforced glass, door locks and buzzers.

Ed McSwain

Las Vegas

Get another genie

To the editor:

The genie is out of the bottle on guns. Thanks to the National Rifle Association gun guys – “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” – there are now more than 250 million guns in American homes.

As a group we are now better armed than most of those we pay to protect us. In November 2012, the federal government reported that 2 million guns were sold (“Obama is going to take our guns away”). Outside of re-establishing the ban on assault weapons, what else can we do? We can’t put a body-armored cop and a metal detector in every public place, every public facility. It isn’t possible to lock up every person we suspect might do harm to us.

We can do a better job of physically securing places like our schools without making them prisons. About the other thing that makes any sense now is a ban on the sale of all semi-automatic weapons. You don’t need any of these – the AK-47, AR-15, a 9 mm Glock handgun – to hunt Bambi or for personal protection. Bolt, lever and pump-action rifles and shotguns work just fine, and so do revolvers. China isn’t planning on sending a 100 million man army to our shores anytime soon. The Chinese likely prefer profits to war. Perceived personal protection needs can be easily satisfied with revolvers. Spraying an area in seconds with 30 or 100 bullets from a semi-automatic weapon isn’t smart or safe.

As with 32,000 automobile deaths and 100,000 or more injured annually on our highways, we must now become accustomed to accepting a high public death and injury rate from guns. More Americans are being killed by guns in Chicago than in Afghanistan. Our legislators, in their wisdom, did not place the proper controls on guns. Our Founding Fathers, understanding the need at that time for security, didn’t anticipate that AK-47s would replace the musket and Kentucky rifle. Neither did they foresee our huge standing armed forces, National Guard, state and local police. All these security forces were nonexistent in the 18th century.

We’ve made our bed and now we get to lie in it. If only we had another genie.

Richard Rychtarik

Las Vegas

Fast and Furious

To the editor:

Last week’s Sunday talk shows were dominated by gun control advocates, and the basic message seems to be that assault weapons should be banned, and that President Obama must take the lead to get this done.

How does this reconcile with the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious operation? They facilitated the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels with no means of tracing them.

Strangely, people like President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder were completely unaware that this was happening. If they decide to confiscate assault weapons from Americans, perhaps they should round up the ones from Mexican drug lords as well.

Owen Nelson

Las Vegas

Keep it constitutional

To the editor:

I hope Jerry Sturdivant’s Tuesday letter, wherein he decides to throw our Constitution under the bus, was written under the frustration and sadness caused by the tragedy in Connecticut. Mr. Sturdivant can’t really believe that only the police should have guns, and that stopping and searching people anytime for anything is OK. That is exactly what the Nazis did to prepare for their takeover of Europe, and we all know how that turned out.

Soon we would be allowing the police to imprison everyone who looks weird, or who has his head shaved, or goes to Lady Gaga concerts. As the adage goes, soon they might be coming for you, Mr. Sturdivant.

I do, however, support an approach where substantial penalties for gun crimes are assessed. Add 20 additional years to any crime if a gun is used. I support citizens having concealed weapons to defend themselves. I support citizens being able to defend their lives, their families and their property. It’s their right and moral obligation. Reinstate the death penalty for all murders. If the killer of those children had been captured, he would not have been executed in Connecticut.

More immediate remedies could include armed former police to be assigned to the entrances of all schools. They are already trained and could be used part-time, during school hours. Or here’s an idea: What if we spent money on mental health, not on handouts to foreign countries. We can make a difference, but marginalizing the Constitution is not the way to do it.

Ron Moers

Henderson