Keep letters coming

I have really enjoyed the spirited exchange of views on both sides of the current issue on guns!

I have learned a great deal. To the lady who is concerned about stray rifle bullets being sprayed around the neighborhood by a defending home owner, entering her home, I’d say, good point!

However it is obvious that she most likely does not know much about guns and ammunition. A properly trained and responsible gun owner/defender would load his rifle with a non-lead composite material that breaks up when it hits the would-be assaulter and stop at that point or walls if the defender should unlikely miss. The need for large magazines is because the “safer” ammunition does not have great stopping power and may require more than one. There also may be more than one assailant. Keep up the letters, both sides need to be heard!

We are all in this together and as Americans we can work it out.

ROBERT A. TAYLOR, Boise

Media’s political agenda

That horrible school shooting is unthinkable (or for most of us) to comprehend the unbelievable sorrow that has occurred for parents and friends of the victims.

How can David Muir (ABC, Channel 6) spend almost the entire program dwelling on the sorrow and tears of such a tragedy? To dwell constantly showing the tears streaming on faces seems rather crass.

Maybe to get his audience worked up for his anti-gun agenda? Please, just dwell on the news and not humiliate the victims by showing the complete sorrow that they have endured.

CARL WERTEL, Mountain Home

Assault weapon is WMD

The editorial cartoon on Sunday the 20th was dead on! I do not disagree with gun ownership, but as a veteran who got an original AR-15 in ’Nam and witnessed the horrible kill factor I had at my fingertips as we carried “banana clips” to shoot more, I wonder why anyone can suggest it is a hunting rifle like an ott six or 30 caliber. It is nothing more than a WMD! It is only good for slaughter. Ban them and large clips and allow “normal” self protection weapons.

STEVE JEYNES, Boise

The right names

What do you call devices that are designed specifically and exclusively to quickly kill a large number of people, and which can be recharged with many projectiles within seconds? Obviously, WMDs, Weapons of Mass Destruction. In various configurations, they are often called “assault rifles,” and were developed for the military.

And what do you call the organizations that promote the purchase and use of these devices by untrained civilians for no known civilian application? Why of course, they also are WMDs, Weapons of Mass Deception. They go by several different names: The National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF — the gun manufacturers' trade association), which would like us to believe that people with these devices pose no threat to any of us.

Personally, I don’t believe it. Do you?

TOM NAGLE, Eagle

School shooting

Groundhog Day:

It’s 7:15 a.m., I’m finishing my coffee watching my kids eat their cereal. Now they are getting ready to go to school, so begins the complaining “it’s too cold,” “where’s my backpack?” I say “have a fun day at school” and give a quick hug, I’m off to work. My phone rings, it’s my wife, she’s screaming, “Something’s happened at the school, it’s on CNN!” In the breakroom, I see chaos, police cars, ambulances, barrier tape, swat teams milling about the school. I get to my car, head for the school. I’m anxious, turn on the radio and hear this, “A lone gunman, shot his way into the school, killing the on-duty security guard, principal and several teachers, killing 20 to 25 6-year-old children and two teachers before killing himself.” We’ve buried our children now. My wife is on sedatives now. She sleeps all day now. My home is silent now. It’s so hard to get up now. My soul hurts now. It’s 7:15 a.m.

ROBERT NICHOLAS, Boise

NRS’s influence

4.5 million NRA members. 300 million citizens against the use of assault weapons in schools. The NRA seems to have undue influence on the Congress. Who would have guessed?

I think all these people who want to shoot assault weapons should join the U.S. Army, and shoot assault weapons for serious. That would reduce the call for re-instituting the draft.

BILL WILSON, Boise

Guns in the Capitol

So state legislators, a man with a handgun who mingles with a touring group of Boy Scouts to gain access to your legislative home leaves you feeling unnerved, does it? You feel the need to protect yourselves with new security rules, do you? How perfectly, ridiculously ironic. One can practically hear the outrage in Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill when he asks, “What happens when six people come in and sit in the front row of the gallery with shotguns across their laps? I sure as heck am not going to leave my senators in there with that.”

Oh really? How would you feel about just one person in the front row of the gallery with an assault rifle across his lap? Any better? If you’re perfectly willing to unleash the gun-toting, NRA-loving contingent on the rest of us, you need to be willing to tolerate it as well.

In the meantime, we’ll all be out here dodging bullets, waiting to see how your unease with an up-close-and-personal open carry translates into laws to protect everyone from gun violence, even people who don’t happen to be under the roof of the Idaho State Capitol Building.

DEBI CLOSSON, Boise

Wasden embraces the wrong issue

Twenty innocent beautiful little school children, precious angels now eternal, first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., along with six innocent women staff members were viciously murdered by a madman armed with powerful semi-automatic military style assault weapons with high capacity magazines. But forget all that people, according to our brilliant rocket scientist, Idaho State Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, the real insidious threat to children is: pornography, prostitution and human sex trafficking. I guess according to Mr. Wasden’s brilliant Sherlock Holmes reasoning, Adam Lanza was just a naughty misguided little boy compared to Johns who purchase individuals for sex. They apparently are the real villains we have to protect ourselves from. Way to go, Mr. Wasden, way to go. You have enlightened me. Not.

DUANE A. COATES, Meridian

Stop the insanity

Enough! If the slaughter of 20 first graders is not enough to curb guns then what is enough? Where does this insanity stop and who is going to stop it? The gun lobby is acting cowardly in this debate and no elected official should in any way side with the NRA without justly earning the stigma of insensitivity and venality.

I was an infantry officer in Vietnam; I know what damage a 7.62 rifle round can do. Can you imagine the scene in that classroom? Tiny 6- and 7-year-old children shot multiple times. The carnage would be unimaginable; blood by the buckets, arms and legs blown off, heads missing, tiny bodies eviscerated. What pieces of their children did the parents have left to bury? How did parents even identify their blown-apart children? Look at the pictures of Grace and Noah and all of those beautiful children and then tell me there is no need for gun control.

Politicians frightened by a vocal minority time and again let it pass, waiting for the next news cycle to dilute the pain of Newtown’s. So do we do it again? Are we, as a people, really that craven?

MARC HILL, Boise

Citizens have rights

I’d like to talk to you about gun control. I don’t even know why this is a national issue, the government doesn’t have the right to tell us what kind or if we can have a gun; we have our own rights to own and choose what kind of gun we can have. What if terrorists attack us and all we have is our fists while they would have assault rifles and other high advanced guns?

Thanks.

PARKER SUMMERS, age 11, Nampa

Powerful perspective

I was moved by the letter from Ken Artley, who believes that his gun saved him from robbery or worse. His perspective is powerful.

But let me offer mine. When I was 23, I was raped by an emotionally unstable, knife-wielding stranger.

During the four-hour ordeal he threatened many times to kill me. I believe that had he had a gun, he would have done it. That he didn’t gave me time to talk him down from his rage.

Could I have defended myself? No. He snuck up behind me and grabbed me around the neck. Had I had a gun he would have found it and might have used it. Had it been in my apartment it would have done me no good, since he never let me get more than two feet away from him. At best, it would have been useless; at worst, it would have killed me. I believe I am alive today because neither of us had a gun.

I am delighted that Mr. Artley was not robbed or killed and is with us today to share his perspective. I am equally glad that for lack of a gun I am still here as well.

JEAN MCNEIL, Boise

Sheriff is correct

I would like to thank Sheriff Raney for his intelligent observations about the current gun legislation.

LEE BERNASCONI, Boise