Loves the new newsletter format
To the editor:
LOVE the new newsletter format. So much easier to get to what you want to read (although I end up reading ALL of it anyway!), and congratulations on hitting the 15 year mark. Keep up the good work!
— Name withheld, Columbia, S.C.
Liked old tag motto better
To the editor:
Whatever happened to “Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places,” which really gave a more positive spin to our state? Just wondering.
— Mary Heatherly, Spartanburg, S.C.
Gun control edit doesn’t pass muster, but some suggestions sound
To the editor:
Where can one get an objective, non-politicized, depiction of the facts about gun violence in the USA? Anti-gun control groups claim that the vast majority of USA homicides with a firearm happen in the most tightly gun-controlled cities of Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. – thereby skewing the gun violence statistics of the nation. Gun control groups, on the other hand, claim more gun deaths occur in “red” states than in “blue” states.
Furthermore, many seem to want to infringe gun rights without a constitutional amendment that revokes or abridges the Second Amendment right of citizens to bear arms., while the National Rifle Association (NRA) seeks to prevent any regulation of guns, claiming that the individual’s right to bear guns is as constitutionally sacrosanct as the freedom of the press. See the following link for a short constitutional history of the Second Amendment, which seems to imply that the NRA’s position is closer to how the Constitution is currently interpreted. That said, the NRA’s position clearly goes further than the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Second Amendment.
I am most troubled, however, by those such as you who seem to believe that gun control automatically will mitigate violence against Americans. The linkage between gun control and less killings in the USA is specious at best (see reference above to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.), while you seem to think that the connection is so obvious that it needs only to be implied. You additionally implicitly choose to ignore legitimate constitutional issues which presumably can be finessed in the name of “let the killing stop” (my chosen phrase to capture your “Wild West” metaphor).
Your case for gun control therefore does not pass my test for a rationale upon which to limit the Second Amendment’s individual right to bear arms. I can be convinced that there is a basis for legitimate, reasonable limits on access to guns, but you have not made them in your editorial.
That said, some of your specific suggestions – despite the flawed basis upon which you advance them — seem sound to me, and I agree that gun laws in S.C. may need to be tightened. But such tightening must be done within current constitutional guidelines and based upon a clearly logical connection (supported by facts) between enhanced public safety and the suggested changes — not based on an ad hominem call to “stop the killing” through gun control because gun violence is “out of control” and Congress is paralyzed, while ignoring any constitutional issues such gun control measures may create.
— Bob Johnson, Summerville, S.C.
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