Letters: Will Orlando prompt gun control?

ISSUE | GUN CONTROL

Don't blame Second Amendment

The Islamic State may encourage mass murders, but America is the great enabler.

One need look no further than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's 2008 opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller to find approval of gun laws and legal limits to the Second Amendment. Scalia wrote, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited."

He agreed that it "was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." He allowed for laws "imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." And he wrote that limitations on contemporary firearms are "fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons.' "

This was a majority Supreme Court ruling written by a conservative justice, not liberal propaganda aimed at taking away people's Second Amendment rights.

America disregards the power it has to limit gun rights at our peril.

Lisa Hastings, Philadelphia, lkh1066@earthlink.net

It's not futile

John Baer's column offered a morally bankrupt justification of gun carnage ("Politics as usual in response to mass shootings," Wednesday). He wrote, "The hard truth is, nothing stops this stuff. . . . Gun violence happens, mass shootings happen, regardless of laws."

Actually, other countries have experienced this carnage and have had the common sense and moral courage to restrict citizen access to weapons of war. It doesn't make them 100 percent immune to gun violence and mass shooting, but it makes this violence a lot rarer.

After the killing of 49 innocent people in an Orlando nightclub, the idea of risk reduction - making it even a little harder for people to stockpile military-style weapons to use against their family and fellow citizens by expanding background checks - sounds like a good idea. It's a noble goal, one that 90 percent of Americans agree with. And one that 10 percent - including, apparently, John Baer - are working hard to block.

Patricia DeBoer, Philadelphia

Political hocus-pocus

How meaningless is it that Democratic and Republican elected officials are fighting over whether to prohibit the sale of firearms to people on government no-fly and terrorist watch lists ("Senators push but split on gun deal," Thursday)? Such prohibitions are political drivel and essentially meaningless in their potential impact on mass shootings or even individual gun deaths. None of the mass shooters in recent years was on any such list, including the Orlando killer.

This is a lot of political smoke. Only prohibition of ownership of semiautomatic weapons would have any effect on these types of massacres. Semiautomatic weapons have no use other than to shoot people, often in large numbers. Get rid of them if you really want to prevent future Orlandos, Sandy Hooks, or any of the other unspeakable slaughters of recent years.

Ben Zuckerman, Philadelphia

Ban assault weapons, close loopholes

The Republicans have "compromised" to allow votes on two Democratic gun-regulation proposals ("Get serious about guns," Friday). Watch their votes; we know where this is going.

If they want to sell their souls to the National Rifle Association, that's their prerogative. But the souls of the 49 dead in Orlando; the 26 victims, mostly children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School; the 12 moviegoers killed in Aurora, Colo.; and many more were not theirs to sell to the NRA or to sacrifice at the altar of elective politics.

Congress should immediately pass legislation to ban sales of assault weapons and similar firearms, close loopholes in presale screening, and broaden the classes of potentially dangerous people prohibited from buying guns. And the product-liability protection afforded to gun manufacturers must be repealed.

The NRA and its allies hide behind the imaginary shield of the Second Amendment. As they well know, however, none of the amendments is absolute.

Stephen P. Ulan, Wynnewood

Booker talks sense

Thanks to Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) for supporting the filibuster of Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn). Booker spoke in favor of commonsense gun-control legislation that would prohibit people on terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns and would expand background checks.

As Booker said on the Senate floor, "We just can't go on with business as usual . . . in a time when there is such continued grievous threat and vulnerability to our country, when you see again and again mass shooting after mass shooting."

I hope that Senate Republicans heed his call to come together to support such commonsense safety measures, which will save lives.

Alexandra Stark, Moorestown

Tracing a bullet's deadly path

I am a Vietnam vet, and I am gay.

As a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman, I served as a combat medic with the Marines, providing emergency treatment to our troops. Compelled by my experiences in Vietnam, I have been working to end gun violence.

Shooting victims in Newtown, Conn.; Fort Hood, Texas; Charleston, S.C.; and now Orlando suffered like a Marine who was shot in the chest with an AK-47 while we were on patrol in Vietnam.

This is what happened to him: After the bullet perforated skin, muscle, and bones, it traveled through his body, shearing, tearing, and crushing the tissue and organs in its path. It produced a cavity that filled with blood from ruptured blood vessels. His heart continued to pump blood through the bullet hole in the heart wall, filling the chest cavity at a rate of about five quarts a minute. But there was no pressure to carry blood through the aorta and arteries. With no blood, there was no oxygen, just death.

I tried to save him by putting a dressing over the wound and administering artificial resuscitation, but I failed.

As a gay Vietnam vet who has dealt with the consequences of gun violence, I feel it is imperative that we have sensible gun-control legislation, such as reinstituting the assault-weapon ban and expanding background checks on firearm sales.

We must stop the epidemic of gun violence. We must stop the carnage.

Mike Felker, Philadelphia