Letters 12-20-2012

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Gun control

Gun control

They kill people

Look at it this way: Guns kill people. If a person is compelled to kill a group and he cannot get a gun, he surely wouldn’t do it with a knife.

Summer Kirn

Kailua-Kona

Assault weapons

Ban way past due

Almost all of the recent killing sprees — Aurora, Colo., Newtown, Conn., Virginia Tech, etc. — have involved the use of assault weapons — Glock 9mm pistols, Sig Sauer semiautomatic pistols and Walther weapons.

Gun rights advocates argue private citizens have the right to possess these weapons for personal protection.

Unless you think an army of bad guys is going to invade your home, they are not very useful. Hunters would never use them — far too messy.

The only thing they’re really good for is killing people.

If we do not take the initiative to ban these weapons, we, as a nation and a people, will be morally culpable.

It’s time that our legislators — Mazie Horono, Colleen Hanabusa, the governor and other lawmakers take the lead in banning the sale of assault weapons.

Dennis Brown

Waimea

Close bases

A military solution

This might work as well or better than gun control: Close our bases all over the world and bring our hundreds of thousands of soldiers home and put some in each school and shopping center and along our borders for our own security, instead of every other country’s security and our so-called “America’s (corporate)interests.”

Our aircraft carriers are already floating military bases, we don’t need to spend billions maintaining bases in Europe, Guam, South Korea, Iraq, Afghanstan, Cuba, etc. We would save billions of dollars and keep families together.

Michael Swerdlow

Waikoloa

Gun control

A different approach

Unfortunately, if gun control should ever happen in our lifetime it will be too late — the guns are already out there and easily available.

The only way to stop it somewhat is to put severe restrictions on the purchase of ammunition. However, and unfortunately, there will be lots more killings if and when something like this is put into law. How sad.

Christa Wagner

Kailua-Kona

Attitude

A recent reminder

I read with interest the letter from Johanna Bowen regarding Paul Allen.

While I agree with nothing in her letter, I would like to thank her for reminding me one of the reasons my wife and I moved to Kailua-Kona was to get away from people like her — with that mainland attitude she possesses.

Mac McInnis

Kailua-Kona