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In reply to Art Bonneau's letter "Citizens Need Arms" (Jan. 7): Our country's leaders need to start looking at the future instead of attempting to put out today's fires with an empty fire extinguisher. Nothing we do today will curb the violence. It's impossible to achieve in our society. But if we fail to act today to curb the senseless gun-powered violence, the future truly looks grim. When the Second Amendment was written, the gun of choice was a single-shot muzzleloader. We know what we have today, but we haven't a clue what people will be able to buy in the future.
The military has a rifle that shoots $30 bullets, which can be calibrated to shoot over or around a wall and explode into the enemy. With our current vision of corporations allowed to run our politicians, when will a new company start up to begin mass producing these rifles and bullets for the hunter wanting to shoot around trees? When does this end? It ends when sanity prevails.
If the government can listen in on your cell phone even when it is turned off (and it can), why shouldn't it be allowed to know who owns a gun? The National Rifle Association has fought so fiercely to protect the rights of gun manufacturers (they aren't protecting your rights to own a gun; that's a by-product) that they write the laws for the politicians to allow more guns to be sold discreetly. We need to change that. Why does someone need an armory of weapons of mass destruction?
The future will absolutely bring new machines of mass murder unless we decide today that we as a people have had enough of this 200-year-old thinking.
TOM TOMKINS
Bethel Park
First Published January 10, 2013 12:00 am
