Letters to the Editor The Gun Debate Continues To the Editor: I wanted to express my enthusiasm and admiration for Jim Hanas’ article, “It’s the Guns, Stupid” (cover story, July 9th issue). Personal firearms have no place in a complex, highly interdependent society. The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, is subject to interpretation. It states that “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” If the interpretive weight is put on the first clause, rather than the second, the logic could follow that gun owners would be required to be active members of the National Guard (i.e., the militia), and handguns would be excluded altogether as having no military purpose. Over time, that would certainly reduce the number of guns from 235 million. Joe Lapsley e-mail (Memphis) To the Editor: Okay, I read it all and I’d like to comment. The form letter won’t do justice. You want to boil this down to simple answers? Fine, it’s just as simple to say that if taking guns away is the answer, Washington, D.C., would be the safest place in the country. Oh well, that doesn’t hold up, huh? Nor will it anywhere else unless our Constitutional Right is stomped on and is that good? Simple answers? I guarantee violent gun deaths would go down if these 3 steps were implemented. 1) If you have committed a felony and are found with a gun in your possession, you automatically get 35 years in prison, with no parole. 2) If you commit a crime using a gun, you get life in prison with no parole. 3) If you kill someone using a gun, you will be executed within 30 days. Naturally, the circumstances should be such that there is no doubt that you did this (multiple eyewitnesses, etc. Remember the guy that shot the people on the New York subway?) and “why” doesn’t matter. Simple … direct … and it will lower the gun death rate. Now if we aren’t willing to do this then we best get ready to confiscate every thing that can be used to kill people. Then we’ll have a pretty sorry life without bricks, bats, cars, pillows, knives, arsenic, rocks, and on and on. Tom Murrah e-mail (Memphis) To the Editor: I’m writing to address something that was scarcely mentioned in your article on guns: the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment states: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Conventional wisdom today tells us that the “militia” referred to is our National Guard and that, therefore, the personal right to own guns is nonexistent. This would mean, then, that our Founders went through the trouble of enshrining in the Bill of Rights an amendment that gives federally controlled military groups the right to carry weapons. One must ask: If that’s all the amendment does, why even bother putting it in the Bill of Rights? This “National Guard” interpretation is “rather like saying,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “police officers being necessary to law and order, the right of the people to carry handguns shall not be infringed. It produces a guarantee that goes far beyond its stated purpose.” The interpretation is also illogical because it is inconsistent with every other amendment in the Bill of Rights. “It would be strange,” Scalia wrote, “to find in the midst of a catalog of rights of individuals a provision securing to the states the right to maintain a designated ‘militia.’” Although there may be reasonable debates over the extent to which gun ownership is protected, the idea that mass gun prohibition can be enacted without repealing the Second Amendment is simply false. Evan C. Woodbery e-mail (Germantown) Technology and Values To the Editor: Jackson Baker (Politics, July 9th issue) quoted a person I admire and respect very much, Bartlett’s Happy Price, who attended Snowden School and Central High School, as saying, “We must teach technology today.” I also attended Snowden School and Central High School. But I am afraid that we have been living under the illusion that technology will bring happiness and usher in a better life. I am sure that Happy Price would agree that without a strong sense of values and of direction, however, the human spirit tends to weaken or deteriorate. Technology can liberate us from drudgery and open up new possibilities for cultural development. Technology can also have a dehumanizing effect and be potentially dangerous if there is no self-discipline and dedication to enduring values. Why was it that in Germany the educated classes did so little to resist the rise of Nazism? Was it due to the fact that during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the rapid development of many fields in technology, the value studies were pushed aside, with the result that highly trained specialists were unconcerned about the larger problems of the community and the world? We may be successful in transmitting to the young a knowledge of our machines – technology – but we are failing to transmit to the oncoming generations our moral, cultural, and spiritual heritage. … Arthur H. Prince Memphis The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 687, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at memflyer@aol.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.