Everyone packing heat

Pretty predictable response from the NRA:

‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ [“NRA: For safe schools, ‘a good guy with a gun,’ ” page one, Dec. 22.]

So there you have it.

Keep pumping out handguns to the masses so we can protect ourselves from everyone else who has a gun. Everyone packing heat to protect ourselves from everyone else packing heat.

Think elderly Miss Green in the classroom can protect the 30 kids in her charge if she starts packing heat like the NRA suggests?

Even four policemen with bulletproof vests and guns on their hips can’t protect themselves from a single determined person with a concealable handgun (Lakewood incident).

Nope, our only hope for a reduction to our rising internal terrorism problem is to ban all handguns, with a stiff penalty for those who disregard the law.

But I do like the buyback program that was floated in The Seattle Times [“Let’s buy back 200 million guns,” Opinion, Dec. 20].

$500 per gun. Paid by a government voucher that must be spent within 90 days — how’s that for economic stimulation!

Bill Lewandowski, Everett

NRA wins the debate

The National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre gave the speech of his life on Friday, and won our national debate. I witnessed an appeal to reason, and I think his arguments deserve our respect instead of ridicule and hatred.

Protesters twice shamelessly stood between him and the TV cameras and painted the NRA itself with the blood of Sandy Hook’s innocents. They and their comrades shift the blame from the sole guilty murderer and gun abuser to the advocacy group that stands for law and order, for nonviolent use and legal defensive use of firearms against such as Adam Lanza.

LaPierre’s arguments were entirely correct: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. We also as a society are complicit in creating the ultimate soft target for homicidal maniacs by disregarding armed security in favor of proudly “gun-free schools” — giving our president, banks, sports stadiums and mall shoppers more fast-acting security than the schoolhouses of our most precious children.

What LaPierre couldn’t say was that we as parents bear the final responsibility for sending our children to Lanza-like shooting galleries; better instead that our children be home-schooled in safety.

Thomas Erickson, Lynnwood

More guns not the answer

How can the NRA even suggest more guns will solve the problem?

If U.S. presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy could be shot and killed, and Roosevelt and Reagan injured, all while surrounded by the best armed guards in the world, then no amount of gunpower will ever be enough to stop a determined lunatic.

More guns will not reduce these tragedies, only stricter gun laws.

Lisa Harmon, Auburn

Fortress mentality

The NRA’s proposal that all schools should have armed guards makes clear their vision for America. It is a vision in which widespread gun ownership is so important that it is worth the trade-off of having to live our lives inside fortresses.

If, in the America they envision, we will need armed guards outside schools then we will also need them outside theatres, restaurants, churches, parks, office buildings, sports stadiums and everywhere else people gather.

Life in a fortress: Do Americans really love their guns that much?

Dick Schwartz

The cost of gun ownership

OK, NRA, we can put armed cops in all of our schools — we just need to raise taxes on gun sales and ownership enough to cover the costs.

And while we are at it, we can raise taxes on guns enough to cover all the other social costs of gun proliferation — such as the increased cost of health insurance and medical care needed to treat shooting victims, the lost wages of shooting victims, and the cost of prison time for crimes involving guns.

Lee Holmer, Seattle

Sign me up

Let’s all join the NRA.

If enough responsible people become NRA members, we could elect leaders who don’t think the answer to every problem is more guns.

If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em,

Lloyd Condra, Woodinville

Guns are not autonomous

The NRA was backed into a corner. Whatever it said was going to be called wrong by some, and mocked by others.

Some people persist in believing that guns are autonomous; they move around on their own, select their targets and pull their own triggers.

I say we ban cars so that those renegade guns cannot easily travel from place to place killing people. Fewer cars on the road also means fewer vehicular deaths and reduces the inventory available for car bombs in the future.

If the evildoers, criminals and mentally-ill shooters do not obey the first weapons-control directive “Thou shalt not kill (murder),” why does anyone think they will pay attention to Obama’s tough anti-violence, anti-gun talk or respect and comply with any “new and improved” gun-control laws Congress would pass?

Byron Gilbert, Seattle