LETTER: Gun 'control' may just be necessary

It could never have been my desire to create a carbine-toting feud amidst the opinion pages of this fine newspaper when I humbly appealed to the populace out there to reconsider the merits of gun “control.”

Now, I know that’s a “loaded” word, rife with frightful connotations, capable of pulling the hammer back on some serious barrel buffers... for nothing foams a sportsman’s lips or sets the aorta to clogging like the mere hint that the “govmint” might contemplate gathering up one’s Gatling guns.

Mr. Wheeler’s fervent reminders of history’s futile attempts at weapon management do not go unheeded. Yes, regardless of our efforts, crimes via guns will persist. There will always be an element of our melting pot who will find the bullet an expedient messenger of madness, mayhem, and misery.

It is, however, an undeniable numbers game; more guns available to more people equals more deaths. We cannot pre-MRI the minds of would-be killers who revel in random bloodshed. Many such minds with fingers caressing trigger guards might not light up the monitor as it is....

Then, there’s that seedy police force out there to consider; easy to see why a responsible true-blood citizen might tighten an arthritic grip on his Mauser, holding court with cold steel.

Between recent deaths by choke holds and hair-trigger sprayings of innocents carrying Samsung TV’s down dark alleys at midnight, there’s little faith left in the blue coats. Too many squeaky clean lives snuffed by cops bearing bad media hype and brittle nerves.

Even old Ben Franklin, that ceaselessly toiling founding father dynamo, far-sighted in his invention of cheap bifocals, Wal-Mart kites, and inefficient wood stoves could never have foreseen that a couple of brief centuries later, America would watch a black man named LeBron rewarded with a contract equal to the combined payroll of several inner city New York police precincts just to fling rubber spheroids through netted hoops.

When you try to swallow that perspective, that value system, that sense of social priorities in these new, enlightened times... well, “game on!” It’s “entertainment over criminal containment.” Makes any reasonable guy bag up his arsenal and head for a safe embrasure behind the walls of Fort Apache to ward off the crazies. —Gary Vinson, Kalispell