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Foot control?

Maybe columnist Barbara Shelly should use the Joseph Perez manslaughter case (11/8, Metropolitan, "Man gets probation in fatal beating in store") to demand some reasonable, common-sense laws to control feet and footwear (Perez was punched and stomped). That would make at least as much sense as her inane pleading for more gun control (11/9, Metropolitan, "Boy's life, gun debate end too soon").

Had Jaswinder Singh, who is charged with killing his son and shooting his wife, used a knife, a ball bat, a tire chain, a hammer, a motor vehicle, etc., his son would be no less dead and his wife no less brutalized. The only difference is there is no organized lobby obsessed with banning those inanimate objects, which are used for their intended purposes countless times every day.

Likewise, only an infinitesimal fraction of the millions of firearms now in private hands are used for mayhem, while the overwhelming majority are used responsibly for their intended purposes of sport shooting and self-defense without incidence or abuse.

It heaps insult upon injury when victims of firearms misuse are hijacked by zealots to impose their irrational gun control agenda on law-abiding Americans.

Don Dycus
Kansas City

From: <ddycus@kc.rr.com>
To: <bshelly@kcstar.com>

Ms. Shelly,

Thanks for replying. It's also true that:

more people die from automobile accidents and medical misadventures in the U.S. each year than by firearm homicides and suicides;

some other countries have higher overall annual homicide and suicide rates than the U.S., although fewer with firearms;

some other countries, like Switzerland, Israel, and Finland, have higher per capita rates of firearm ownership than does the U.S., yet have lower crime rates;

violent crime has recently skyrocketed in England and Australia, which have both forbidden and confiscated legally owned firearms; and

U.S. states and municipalities with the most restrictive gun control laws also have the highest crime rates, while states that permit concealed carry have lower crime rates than adjacent jurisdictions that prohibit armed self-defense.

The point being that treating firearms as some kind of evil menace, instead of a powerful tool that can be used for good or ill, not only doesn't contribute to solving the problem of gun misuse, it exacerbates those problems.

Don Dycus