Letters: Framing the gun debate

Re “The NRA’s loose cannon,� Editorial, Jan. 24

National Rifle Assn. Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s defense of “absolutism� on gun rights requires a strong rebuttal. The framers knew that change is a fact of life, and they wrote the Constitution as a living document that could be changed as the future evolved. We ended slavery and granted women the right to vote, for example.

Since LaPierre is a firm believer in absolutism, he should know that one of the Ten Commandments orders us, without exceptions, not to kill, and yet gun owners disobey this commandment frequently.

May I ask why? If the NRA supports absolutism, then why does it support “stand your ground� laws, which encourage people to shoot rather than talk out disagreements?

George Whitaker

Bellevue, Wash.

You call LaPierre’s statements on President Obama’s proposals for further gun control absurd and illogical. I would call them a bit of wisdom from history.

No student of history can forget that many a nation, either by ignorance or design, when it wanted to tighten its control of the people, resorted to further gun control, including registration. So often it did not stop there. In some countries it became the harbinger that led to tyranny and much worse. In other countries, such as Australia and Great Britain, it has led to confiscation.

I would think a study of history would do you and most Americans well in this latest debate.

Ernest Zimdars

Claremont

On Saturdays in 1934, my cousins and I would walk to the National Theatre in Boyle Heights. This, our neighborhood theater, usually had third-run movies and was affectionately known as the “polyseed opera house,� because patrons usually would purchase the seeds next door at the candy store prior to the movies and eat them during the show.

Saturday was our day at the movies because Western film star Tom Mix would always get the bad guys. He was our hero.

I am now 87 years old and have now matured and no longer seek to emulate Tom Mix and his six-shooters. Why haven’t some other men grown up?

Gary Platt

Woodland Hills

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