Letter to a Friend re Gun Confiscation

Dear D,

Yes, I feel compassion for gun owners. When we had the riots in 92 I drove out to the valley to buy an M1 carbine at a gun shop. They had a seven day waiting period for hand guns, but no waiting period for the M1 because it was considered an antique. Also, I had learned to fire it when I was in the military. A couple of years later it was ripped off when we had a burglary. The cops recovered it some time later, but I never retrieved it because they told me it had been mangled by the burglars.

As to my take on gun ownership, I see both sides of the issue. Guns, like cars, are potentially deadly weapons, and deadly weapons carry with them a grave (no pun intended) responsibility. The problem with car ownership is that cars kill people in accidents, not forgetting that cars can shorten the vehicle owners' life spans because they do not get enough exercise. Similarly, there is a major drawback to gun ownership. While car ownership creates problems by making locomotion all too easy, gun ownership often leads people to solving problems by shooting their opponents rather than calmly communicating with them.

Beyond that, I do consider it a serious problem that the government and big corporations stick their noses into citizens' business to the point where little privacy remains. It is my belief that privacy is a necessary element of freedom.

What's the answer? There needs to be a lot more dialog between those who want to keep guns and those who want to ban them. Underneath it all, I believe most of us want to make this world a better one.