THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 7, 1996 TAG: 9608070009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 38 lines
You guys are once again bashing the National Rifle Association, this time twice on one page (``Stolle on top'' and ``The CDC and the NRA,'' editorials, July 20). It's the same old story, using the First Amendment to try to take away the Second Amendment.
In ``Stolle on top'' you state ``Political pundits speculate that Richard Cullen's departure was prodded by the opposition of the National Rifle Association.''
Webster says, among other things, that a pundit is a ``critic.'' Cullen said his reasons for dropping out of the attorney general race are ``rigors of the campaign trail and the time away from his family.'' Are you calling Mr. Cullen a liar? If the pundits you quote are correct and Cullen isn't willing to stand up to the NRA, that doesn't say much for his character.
As for the Centers for Disease Control, no organization spending taxpayers' money should be allowed to recommend more gun control.
The National Rifle Association is not a powerful lobbying group for the gun industry. It is and always has been a lobbying group for the Second Amendment. The problem is not lack of gun control; it's the moral decay of this country's society and the lack of the criminal-justice system to deal with it.
I guarantee that if there had been 18,500 executions annually for those 18,500 murders annually, there would not be 18,500 murders the next year.
We have literally thousands of gun-control laws on the books, and they have done nothing to reduce crime. As anybody with half a brain knows, all that gun-control laws do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens.
Remember this:
Hitler had gun control.
Castro has gun control.
Clinton wants gun control.
RONALD J. SYBERS
Virginia Beach, July 21, 1996 by CNB