editor:

“Deliberately Ignorant,” would be a better title to describe the author’s column “Stand your ground in Washington.”

Let’s take a look at the U.S. Census’ population tally for last year; over 311 million people reside in the U.S. He is singling out individual incidents involving people from all walks of life, from places separated by thousands of miles and governed by very different laws that not too long ago you would have never heard of without the aid of the Internet and modern communication. 

Now I recognize journalists’ abilities to select only the events that support their arguments, but let’s quote the author: “I could go on forever with a list of those killed by or who engaged in shootings.” I wish that he would go on forever, at least then he would have actually done some research into the subject of his column and not just pulled a few random facts from the Internet to dole out his “Liberal Dose of Absurdity.”

His conclusion of we should not allow anyone to carry firearms in public really neglects one key concept; the people that you really should feel threatened by are the ones that do not care how many laws you make, they will do whatever they please — including shooting someone for their sneakers. 

I’d like to end with a comparison; the author’s idea of removing firearms from hands of those willing to follow the laws because there are incidents of people using this right improperly is roughly similar to the idea that we should not license people to drive because there have been incidents of mistreating this entrustment. I’m willing to bet that the author has gone over the speed limit or made an illegal turn at some point in his driving career so far, so would he be so kind to hand over his license?

Robert Lemmons
junior, mechanical engineering