Control of Assault Weapons

The lack of knowledge about the whole “assault weapons” ban is very clear. Even Robert Faller (letter, Dec. 26), an admitted gun owner, doesn’t realize that the ban has absolutely nothing to do with fully automatic weapons! It only bans semiautomatic weapons that look like the fully automatic versions. In fact, it is still legal to buy the fully automatic versions, with the correct permits, while it is illegal now to buy the semiautomatic versions.

The true red herring is the ban itself. Pick something easy that has a high emotional content and makes good sound bites and forget about tackling the real, more difficult problem--preventing or banning the criminals themselves. I’m not sure who should be more ashamed of themselves--the ones putting out garbage to get votes or the voters that actually believe it.

TERRY KREMIN

Culver City

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Two recent news stories should make the NRA ponder the worthiness of its mantra--take guns from criminals and arm every individual and you have a solution to violence.

The first concerned an armed home invasion in which the resident wrestled the gun away from the robber and managed to shoot him!

The other was of a noncriminal “nice” man who went berserk and slaughtered four people with his assault rifle.

The moral of these two stories is that maybe instead of arming ourselves, let’s take up wrestling, and let’s get rid of all assault weapons, because who knows which one of us is completely sane!

LEONARD ZIRALDO

West Hills

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There was an interesting juxtaposition in the Dec. 26 letters column: a half-dozen epistles bemoaning the obscene fund-raising of our major parties, followed by another three concerning assault weapons, pro and con.

I think the amendments to the Constitution are at fault here. The 1st has been distorted by the courts to include the bribing of politicians, and the 2nd has been appropriated by the gun-huggers to justify every citizen owning his own rocket launcher.

It should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature that these interpretations are at best distant relations to what any reasonably intelligent Founding Father could have intended. Therefore, I propose that we undertake to amend or restate these two amendments so that they reflect what the vast majority of Americans feel: That we can still have free speech without payoffs, and we can still keep a gun in the house without the capability of mass destruction.

ROBERT E. GOYETTE

Rolling Hills Estates