Letter to the Editor: Daddy, why do you sell guns?

June 9, 2003

In 1958, a first-grader learned a fact that is beyond the comprehension of Sarah Brady and anti-gun radicals.

"My teacher asked everyone what their father did for a living. When I explained my father owned a gun shop, I immediately saw the negative reaction in my teacher's face.'' That evening, Nancy First asked her father: "Why do you sell guns? They're bad.''

The father's reply: "If one person has a gun, then all people should have a gun. If only one person or small groups of people have guns, they will have total control over those who don't.''

One deranged person recently entered the Peter B. Lewis Building at Case Western Reserve University, killed one person, shot at and injured others and held some 50 occupants hostage for several hours. This killer had total control over those people.

Had Ohio law permitted it, just one armed occupant in that building might have averted the killing and hours of sheer fright for everyone else.

Ohio law deprives law-abiding citizens the right to carry a weapon for protection, a provision enjoyed by 44 other states and a right provided for by the Second Amendment. It's time the Ohio legislature changed the law.

John J. Myers
Medina

Click here to read the letter in the Akron Beacon-Journal.