Oregon incident and guns

Well, Gary Horton’s at it again. In his latest column, “Gary Horton: ‘Stuff happens’ defines us in America”’ (7 October) he uses the recent outrage committed in Oregon by Christopher Harper-Mercer as a platform from which to launch an anti-gun tirade.

Long on empty rhetoric and short on facts (to the point of complete absence), Horton fails to apply any common sense to the issue. Here’s the first: to those lunatics out there who commit these crimes, “gun free zones” = “target-rich environments”. Has anyone ever heard of one of these mass shootings taking place at a gun store or shooting range? Of course not! They know that the second they pull out their piece they’ll be blown into little chunks.

In fact, in the 30 years since Florida started the ball rolling with the liberalization of CCW laws, and 30-some-odd other states have joined in, the result has undisputedly shown that when more people are known to have the ability to carry concealed weapons the rate of violent crime has dramatically decreased. There’s a clear inverse relationship between legal concealed carry and violent crime.

Peer-reviewed studies by Professors Gary Kleck, John Lott and others have clearly shown that privately-held firearms are successfully used somewhere between 500,000 - 1.2 million times per annum to prevent violent victimization.

Instead what do we have? The usual suspects like Horton, hovering around like vultures, just waiting to pounce on the bodies before they’ve even cooled to try to gin up outrage.

If Horton was really concerned about “carnage”, what about the fifty-five million unborn babies, the most helpless of the helpless, we’ve slaughtered in this country via abortion, .

Where’s your outrage about that, Horton?

You’re in a big rush to cripple the Second Amendment, a right that actually exists as enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but not one peep about a faux “right” made up by some Supreme Court black-robed mandarins.

I recognize hypocrisy when I see it.

Brian Baker

Saugus