Letter: Laws regulating guns should be improved

Tuesday January 16, 2018

Yes, there are rules on the books, but they aren't effective enough.

Editor:

I support the Second Amendment. I accept that it allows people to arm themselves against threats. I even understand the reasoning that says an armed citizenry is a check against a tyrannical government. What I don't understand is the idea that the Second Amendment dictates that ordinary Americans enjoying a concert need to be subject to death, serious injury or life-altering trauma.

No less a conservative than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." A recent letter writer claimed that guns and cars don't kill people, but people do ("Anti-gun arguments don't stand up to facts," Dec. 23). Since we implement laws to make driving a car safer, why can't we consider laws to make using guns safer? The same writer quarreled with the statistics about gun deaths, noting that two-thirds of them were suicides. I don't know why a suicide wouldn't be considered a death. Rather than being an argument against gun control, suicide statistics demonstrate another reason for it. Studies show that access to a gun increases the likelihood of suicide.

Yes, there are already gun control laws. But since the Las Vegas shooter obtained his outrageous firepower legally, perhaps gun laws need to be re-examined. We could start by repealing the Dickey Amendment, which hampers the ability of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to even conduct research about gun violence.

Debra George
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Laws regulating guns should be improved