Sensible gun laws reduce our risk

To the Times:

The writer of a recent letter calling for fewer restrictions on gun sales and ownership (“Stricter gun laws are not the answer,” Delco Times, November 17) says that the gun used in that mass killing in Thousand Oaks, Calif., was legally purchased. What he neglects to mention is that the gun was a semi-automatic – hardly an appropriate instrument of selfdefense, hunting, or target practice – and that the oversized magazine the shooter used, which allowed many more shots to be fired within seconds, was illegally obtained.

The letter’s author is listed as Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, an organization that has repeatedly gone to court to fight against (1) restrictions on the ability of anybody with the right equipment to manufacturer his/her own gun via 3-D printing or to promote same on the internet; (2) laws banning the sale of oversized magazines; (3) concealed carry laws; (4) local gun control laws that can be overruled by more lax state laws; and (5) a waiting period allowing time for a background check on the one making the purchase.

Speaking of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms was always linked from the beginning, even in colonial times, to the need for a well-regulated militia or words to that effect. In other words, not primarily so anybody could develop and use his or her own collection of lethal weapons, regardless of intent.

Sensible gun policies will not prevent all mass killings, armed robberies, domestic abuse homicides, suicides, or tragic deaths of children at the hands of siblings or playmates – any more than sensible traffic laws will reduce the toll in fatal highway accidents. But they can definitely reduce the risk of same. And when it is easier to obtain a gun than get a driver’s license, which is true in many states, the need for stronger, not weaker, gun control legislation is obvious.