Winston-Salem Journal LTE's FR 12/16/11

Guns and safety

I like guns. But anyone with intellectual honesty and the courage to face facts knows guns won't keep us safer.

Police are better trained and more experienced with guns and the use of reasonable force than we will ever be. Yet they are shot and shoot others, often. Gun carriers are several times more likely than non-carriers to be shot during a crime. Thousands, including children (try telling their parents that a rolling pin is a weapon, too), are shot by accident. Guns are the violent criminal's weapon of choice and, ironically, often targets of home invasions against which they were bought to defend.

For the proliferation of guns and concealed-carry to make sense as public policy, we all must be made safer. More than anecdotal examples and untested assumptions are needed to make a compelling (even utilitarian) case that guns save lives or deter violence.

And so is strict accountability: rigorous, ongoing vetting and training of owners, a comprehensive firearms database, liability insurance, stringent rules on where, when, how and by whom guns may be bought, sold and used, and effective punishments for violators.

Let's be honest: Too many people don't care about anyone's safety but their own. Nor are they interested in facts or reason, only the confirmation of their biases and self-serving ideology. They think the law, the police, the courts and elected officials should serve only people like them.

Winston-Salem's ban on concealed carry in parks is not only wise, but refreshingly courageous.

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ANDY G. MILLER

Kernersville

Consider

So the writer of the letter "Rude liberals" (Dec. 10) thinks that liberals are rude. After all, that rude columnist, Paul Krugman, pointed out that Newt Gingrich isn't as smart as he thinks he is. What a slap-down!

So consider:

Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran's war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter claiming that 9/11 widows were "enjoying their husbands' deaths," Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease, ads falsely claiming Sen. Kay Hagan was "godless," Rep. Michele Bachmann calling for an investigation of "un-American views" among some members of Congress, Joyce Kaufman at a tea-party rally: "If ballots don't work, bullets will," Glenn Beck: "Obama hates white people," Rep. Joe Wilson: "You lie!" wingnuts at the FreeRepublic website calling 11-year-old Sasha Obama a "street whore," outright lies from Sarah Palin and others about "death panels," Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedies," booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn't feed, South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts: "We've got one raghead in the White House, we don't need one in the governor's mansion," conservative "Christians" suggesting that people pray for the president's death using Psalm 109:8 as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady "uppity," and on and on and on …

Sure, liberals can be rude. But we have yet to master rudeness as a political philosophy the way conservatives have.

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ANDY STEPHENSON

Winston-Salem

Take down

The writer of the letter "Attacks on Cain" (Dec. 9) blamed "the feminist movement" for conspiring to take down Herman Cain, since Cain had an excellent chance of winning the presidency. However, several of the women who accused Cain of sexually assaulting them did so years ago, before anyone could have guessed he would run for president. Of course, we devious feminists would stop at nothing to take down good and honest men, but not even we have mastered time travel.

I also wonder that the writer believes Cain to have been a threat worthy of such an elaborate conspiracy. When asked, Herman Cain could not even state his position on our involvement in Libya. You know, that African civil war we got involved in this summer? Indeed, the height of his foreign-policy expertise appears to be the world map on his website with a few pretty red arrows slapped on to distinguish our friends from everyone else.

I do not deny that we have planned secret "9/11-style terrorist attacks" to take down great men before — after all, that is the feminist movement's only goal when you ignore silly fringe issues like equal pay and reproductive rights. But we only exert that kind of effort for a candidate who could actually win, not for a two-bit ignoramus like Herman Cain.

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KATHERINE GOFF

Winston-Salem