Rat-a-tat-tat logic of gun control foes

Dear Editor,

Re “LETTER: Putting a few AR-15 facts in correct context,” by George Goodwin, March 25, 2018: The letter follows the pattern of similar letters and facebook posts of “gun experts.”

(Let me say up front that although I have a gun to shoot varmints eating my garden I am not a “gun expert.”)

In their letters, they begin by trying to impress and overwhelm us with their knowledge of guns. For example, “The 5.56 X 45 was designed for combat and the .223…” and “The 5.56 replaced the 7.62 X 51 as the military round.” All this is just a smoke screen for what comes next — outrageous claims, weak arguments and faulty conclusions.

The claim: “…(O)ver the last 50 years … the battlefields were not littered with bodies.”

What? That would include even Vietnam where we lost more than 58,000, sometimes even 200 and 300 per week.

The argument: If “you successfully ban assault weapons then another weapon becomes the weapon of choice.”

We would ban all similar weapons and if another was introduced then we would ban it. too.

And the faulty conclusion: All this banning will “…not make any difference.”

Of course, it will make a difference. It has worked in Australia. It worked in the United States from 1994 to 2004 when we had a ban. The states with the strictest gun laws have, by far the fewest deaths per 100,000 people. The countries with stricter gun laws than we have, have far fewer homicides by firearm per million people than we have.

Our friend knows guns, all right, and he tries to distract us with a rat-a-tat-tat of gun facts, but his claims and arguments and conclusions are but a pea shooter.

Lee Augustine Wawarsing, N.Y.