Letters: Inconsistency in editorial

I want to point out an inconsistency I find in your thinking in this week’s editorial, while stating my personal case for being pro-life and supporting capital punishment laws.

The inconsistency I find in your argument involves deterrence. You seem to think withholding publicity and notoriety from killers will deter other would-be killers from killing. At the same time, you ignore that the prospect of lawfully putting killers to death might be a better—certainly more tried and, possibly, proven—strategy for deterring would-be killers from killing.

If more good guys lawfully carry guns and find fewer “zones” in which they’re prohibited from doing so, and if we continue to reinforce that lives are valuable by holding out the possibility of ending the lives of those who unlawfully take the lives of others, I believe more lives will be protected from gun violence.

Chuck Pace
Lynchburg, Va.

Open carry will law will reduce gun violence

Regarding your editorial on gun violence: Why does the Constitution say “right of the people,” not “right of the militia” regarding firearms? That is a point that gun grabbers do not want to address. And what does the security of a “free state” have to do with the Second Amendment? Again, they don’t want to go there. Watch gun violence drop in the state of Texas with the new open carry law.

All the mass killings have only one common factor: “No firearms allowed.” It serves as an invitation to the insane.

Did prohibition of alcohol work?

Fred Rosenbaum
Gainesville

Change ‘the heart bent on evil’

I appreciate the your gun-control editorial.

My question to you and all others who are opining for laws to control behavior is: Where is God in the solution equation? All of the editorials and opinions I have read seek a legislative solution without considering changing the heart bent on evil to a heart focused on Jesus.

We are not fulfilling our mission and ministry of reconnecting people to God it seems.

Don Barr
Allen

Jesus must come back to achieve editorial’s aim

In calling for a more consistent approach to pro-life issues among believers, Marv Knox seems not to have noticed Chicago has more gun violence than almost anyplace in the country (2,497 shootings since the first of this year), but already has one of the strictest gun-control regimes in the country. Moreover, Illinois abolished capital punishment in 2011, the same year Gov. Pat Quinn commuted the death sentences of every inmate on death row.  The logic of imposing more of the failed Illinois approach, with its ever-increasing body count, on the rest of the country escapes me.

But Mr. Knox adopts a position that is inconsistent. If it is wrong for the state to kill at the close of a lengthy judicial process (a process, by the way, that finds considerable support in both the Old and New Testaments), logical consistency requires that the agents of the state be deprived of their ability to kill on its behalf. He wants to prevent people from using firearms to defend themselves, their loved ones and their property, and he wants to prevent the state from ending the lives of criminals, but he doesn’t seem to mind letting the police have guns and some level of permission to use them.

What Mr. Knox seems to want is a Millennial regime in which everybody is nice to everybody else and nobody wants to kill anybody.  Most of the people I know want the same thing, but we realize that it will take Jesus coming back to get it.

R.E. Ramcharan
Topeka, Kan.

Do we need car-control laws?

A woman in Stillwater, Okla., just ran into a crowd of people, killing four and wounding many. More people die of auto deaths every year than guns owned by the public. Your car probably goes at least 150 MPH, but the highest speed limit I know of is 85 MPH.

By your reasoning, we should make it harder for all citizens to buy a car because some nuts drive drunk or while texting or impaired in some way, and we should never sell a car that goes over 85 MPH. And there is not even an amendment covering cars.

If you will get judges and the current administration to actually enforce the many laws already passed, we would get some of those committing gun violence off of the streets. Instead, we are planning more ways to release those violent people back on the street.

Don Snowden
Plano

Why not require a gun license?

I totally agree with your thoughts on gun control.

Another point I would offer is why we do not require a license to own a gun.  We must pass a test to get a driver’s license, to practice medicine, to practice law, to keep children in a daycare, to teach in school—the list goes on and on. All these areas involve one person’s awareness, education and adeptness at ensuring they are safe to handle an object or situation to protect the health, safety and well-being of others.

I cannot for the life of me understand how American citizens are allowed to buy guns—hand guns, hunting weapons or automatic weapons that can harm oneself, other people or a mass number of people—without any education or showing proof of responsibility to operate and contain the weapon to prevent harm.

It seems this might be a start in the right direction.  Then perhaps we can take on anger management and conflict resolution as a required course in our education system.

Nancy Craddock
Nashville, Tenn.

Grieve sin; rejoice over God’s image in us

Trying to hold the good Bill Cosby and the bad Bill Cosby in tension is difficult. Yet somehow we find ways to do this. Consider Walter White of Breaking Bad, who said: “You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No! I am the one who knocks!” Talk about evil, and yet how many of us secretly understand Walter’s predicament and want him to win?

If we think we are good people, and if we admit a good person can also do evil things, then we self-identify with the likes of White and Cosby. We try not to do that out loud. After allowing ourselves the capability of evil, if we deny even a vestige of goodness in those we consider evil, then we likewise deny redeemable quality in ourselves. We lay awake at night wondering, hoping that isn’t true.

Might we find grace for ourselves in finding a way to cherish what we learned from Cosby’s lovable creation, Heathcliff Huxtable, while abhorring the alleged actions of the real-life Cosby? Might we, by appreciating the good in Cosby (there had to be some good for him to create Heathcliff) while grieving the bad, learn to grieve our sin while rejoicing over the image of God in us?

May it be so. For as long as I live in this mess of a world, in this mess in which I participate, may it be so.

Eric Black
Covington