Gun Benefit Participants

I have delayed writing this letter in the hope that my perception of Jessie Katz’s story “Gun Enthusiasts Stage Benefit Shooting Event” (Metro, Nov. 24) was an overly sensitive reading of what appeared to be an attempt to distort and malign an act of kindness.

I am the man in the picture of our friend Sasha “rubbing her eyes.” After reading your letters, I realized I had to respond. When you crowd in around a little person like a pack of bloodthirsty wolves, the average 5-year-old will, as her aunt put it, “shy up.” That is exactly what happened. Sasha never shed a tear that day.

When I picked up the children and their aunt, I expressed some concern that the shooting might upset them. Ms. Pope and the girls assured me that wasn’t a problem. Ms. Pope explained that the kids were “used to it.” I was anxious for the children to see that guns were tools that could be used for good as well as evil.

I’m happy to report that the money we raised for Sasha and her sisters will help them move out to the gang-infested neighborhood they have been trapped in. Their apartment was only 30 feet from the spot where their mother was cut down by street punks misusing guns.

The desensitizing brutality of these sweet little children began with the ineffective panderings of a liberalized criminal justice system.

The Gun Owners REACT Committee ended that brutalization when it helped them out of their hell on earth.

MICHAEL J. McNULTY

Gun Owners REACT Committee

Corona