Letter: Column on guns is right in target

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March 9, 2013

Letter: Column on guns is right in target

Anonymous Gloucester Daily Times The Gloucester Daily Times Sat Mar 09, 2013, 12:00 AM EST

To the editor:

A response to Ms. Eileen Ford’s “Insights and Outbursts” column, headlined “Too many guns, too many wrongs” (the Times, Thursday, March 7), there are indeed too many “guns” being held in this country.

The number of guns exceeds the number of responsible owners.

I can and will challenge the issue of constitutional rights. That long discussion is a topic for another day, really many days, if opposition ears are open. Yet, we fail to address the issue of fear mongering by entertainment programs such as the ‘police procedurals’ and ‘news presenting’ alarmists.

What might benefit more of us would to be to find ways to improving our skills as people talking with others as participants of equal worth. Weapons that make killing another person casually should be banned. I have no need for a nuclear warhead, a tank, an ICBM, an aircraft carrier …

What bothers me is that we have developed the means to make war a casual and remote exercise.

The loss of life is never a casual event for the victim. The taking of a life should never be a casual event for the taker. We have made it possible for our soldiers to kill others halfway across the world and then trot off to a temperature controlled apartment, or go to a restaurant with friends and have a wonderful meal after the killings.

We do have the right to defend our homes. We do have the right to defend our friends and family. We are not given the right to intimidate others or harm them without extreme justification.

We are not given the right to override the rights of others just because we are “bearing arms.” We do not have the right to be a thug anywhere even though we have the capacity to be one.

A flag-waving thug is still a thug. Excuses are still excuses.

ARTHUR THOMAS

Gloucester