Letters to the editor Dec. 24
Lost and found
As I pulled up to get gas at Harvest gas station, I reached for my wallet to pay with my credit card. My wallet was gone, and I must have lost it on the road or the landfill by Papa’s at Woods Bay.
I panicked and racing home as all my valuables are in the wallet and this is the Saturday before Christmas. Half way home I got a call from my wife and she said a man showed up at our door handing her my wallet. He asked her to check through it as he found it on the ground and didn’t know if someone else took items from it and got my address from my driver's license.
All was there and I don’t know who he was, but he gave me the happiest Christmas I ever had. Thank you, my anonymous friend, and Merry Christmas. Stop by as I owe you at least a good drink.
— Edward Reed, Bigfork
Ghost guns
In the Dec. 23 Inter Lake there was an opinion editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “A burgeoning industry of untraceable weapons.” In my opinion, this editorial is filled with misleading and false information. The author was evidently relying on someone else’s false information when they wrote this article. It is sad but prevalent that news media fails to check the facts and keeps passing along false information to the public.
It was stated that the U.S. has the worst-in-the-world firearms death rate. In my opinion, this implies that we have the highest murder rate, which is misleading.
The U.S. does not have the highest murder rate in the world. According to 2020 data worldwide, the U.S. ranks 57th in intentional homicide, not first. The U.S. has the highest firearms ownership rate in the world. If firearm ownership was causing these deaths, then we should be No. 1, but we are not. If you do some research and gather data on the internet for firearms ownership rate by country and homicide rate by country and plot the data on a graph you can clearly see there is no correlation. I did this and the correlation is zero. More guns do not equal more death. The editorial is implying that more guns equal more deaths, this is simply not true.
The editorial states that all firearm sales require transfer records and a background check, this is false. This only applies to sales or transfers from a firearms dealer. Individuals can buy and sell firearms to another individual without this. However, some states have outlawed individual sales.
The editorial states that it is the gun lobby that is holding up any new laws regarding ghost guns. This is false. Court cases have held that firearm kits are not firearms and cannot be prohibited. The main driver of opposition to banning ghost guns comes from tens of millions of individual gun owners and their civil rights organizations who stand up to the encroaching power of government to take our Second Amendment rights.
The editorial states that the only logical reason for ghost guns is to make it easer for people who are not supposed to have them to get them. This is false. It has never been illegal under federal law for an individual to make a gun for their own use. People have been doing this for hundreds of years. This is a hobby that many people do. Some people also do not want the government to know what they own. This is called privacy.
The editorial does not state that it is already illegal for a prohibited person to make or own a firearm. The article does not state that it is already illegal for someone to make a firearm to give or sell to another. These are both federal crimes.
The editorial says that having a serial number on a firearm will help in solving crimes. This is very misleading. A serial number on a firearm can only be traced to the original purchaser, not to the current owner and certainly not to someone who steals it. A serial number can help return the firearm to the original owner in case the firearm is stolen and then found. But it does not tell you who had the firearm last. Serial numbers can be erased.
The editorial states that the number of ghost guns recovered at crime scenes has exploded. The editorial does not state how many ghost guns there actually are. I believe that the use of ghost guns in crimes is very low. This would be something to investigate. Some of those so-called ghost guns may be serialized firearms that have had the serial numbers filled off. If a criminal uses a firearm that can be traced to them and they file off the serial number and discard the firearm then voila, no more trace. So even serialized firearms have limits.
The whole ghost gun argument is yet another red herring to provide the gullible and uninformed with talking points to further restrict your rights. The best way to save lives and reduce crime is to put the criminals in jail and not let them out.
— William Fry, Kalispell