Letters | The fantasy of a world without guns

PETER DURANTINE'S polemic (

op-ed, May 16

) against private firearm ownership may sound nice, but is hopelessly naive, not to mention historically inaccurate.

Although it's true that ideas are the basis of political change, the American Revolution was not fought and won by a debating society, but by armed battle.

World Wars I and II were not solved by U.N. negotiations, but by the blood sacrifices of the armed forces of the United States and our allies. Many thousands of tons of armaments were expended in these conflicts to protect and maintain the ideas so loved by Mr. Durantine and all freedom-loving peoples.

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot all ensured that the populace was disarmed before enacting their own successful ideas for mass-extermination.

Our Founding Fathers well understood that an armed populace ensures the liberty of individuals as well as of a free state (well-documented in the Federalist Papers) because, unfortunately in the world we inhabit, the idea of freedom is finally preserved only through force. The peaceable, negotiated world of Peter Durantine exists only in a fond fantasy.

John Nernoff

Philadelphia