Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 14:28:03 -0400
From: Cathy Wright
Subject: In response to: firearm friendly community?
In response to: firearm friendly community?
While I firmly believe that domestic violence is a tragedy, Ms. Crowell’s remarks are distorted and biased. We all own “assault” weapons: guns, baseball bats, cars, golf clubs, kitchen knives, andirons, hammers and fists. The general public has been duped into believing that the gun is to blame. Semi-automatic firearms used by (domestic violence) criminals are branded as “assault weapons” , two words linked with fully automatic “machine guns.” What the general public also doesn’t seem to know is that the automatic “assault rifles” have been banned outside of military use for nearly 75 years by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Semi-automatic firearms have been around for over a hundred years and are owned and lawfully used by millions of law-abiding people.
I think the confusion about semi-automatic vs. fully-automatic firearms started when the appearance of firearms began to change in the late 1960’s. Woods used for gun stocks became expensive, and plastics made it possible to produce replicas of wood stocks and keep costs down. However, the color, shape, grip, and barrel shroud gave rise to the “assault weaponâ€
and “automatic rifle” description. This new style of gun making has come to denote criminal intent and tragedy to the uninformed.
Gun ownership doesn’t cause crime. The criminal does. Whether a firearm has a long or short barrel or fires single or multiple rounds, its capacity for “good” or “evil” rests entirely with the user. No gun ban has ever kept guns out of the hands of criminals – only prisons do.
I hope we can find a way to stop domestic violence. I hope we find a way to prevent a criminal from using his or her anger to destroy families. I hope we can have swift, certain, and severe punishment for criminal behavior. Please don’t insinuate that semi-automatic gun owners are, by association, no better than criminals. I resent that.
Sincerely,
Cathy Wright
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 07:33:32 -0400
From: Karen Crowell
Subject: firearm friendly community?
Anyone who aspires to live in a “firearm friendly community” obviously isn’t concerned about how many domestic violence incidents involve guns. Anytime there are guns in the hands of angry people, someone ends up getting hurt. Or dead.
Assault with a deadly weapon is a serious crime. Referring to a deadly weapon as an “AR” is tacitly admitting that it isn’t friendly. It does nothing to diminish the fact that it is an Automatic Rifle, an assault weapon that is intended to rapidly and repeatedly fire. Indiscriminately. At a moving target, or a crowd of people. A very deadly weapon. Appropriate for use in a combat zone.
Why anyone would want to live in a combat zone, I have no idea. But if you want to live in a “firearm friendly community” and you think owning an assault rifle is the best way to defend yourself, then a combat zone is a much more accurate description of the kind of community you imagine living in.
Hardly what I would call “friendly.”
Karen Crowell
*Cathy Wright*