Tech Victim's Dad Refutes Gun Stance

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

Richmond Times-Dispatch, you can always be counted on for a well-reasoned editorial! Here is my response to "The Loophole":

I love the implied analogy between getting shot and getting food poisoning, but I think my son would have preferred a bout of diarrhea to four bullets in his body!

What is it with gun owners and paranoia? The government knows that I own a car, a pickup truck, and a motorcycle, as well as a house (or at least part of it!), yet how much time do I spend each day worrying that the government is going to come at night and take any of them away from me? Zip. Zilch. Nada. Could the basis of this paranoia perhaps be shame about knowing the true cost of gun ownership?

I see that I am now a "gun prohibitionist," despite the fact that I have said publicly, and will say again as many times as I can, that I have no problem with law-abiding people -- who pass a proper background check and are gun savvy -- having as many hunting rifles, shotguns, and even handguns as they can afford! Strange, but that doesn't sound very prohibitionist to me!

I guess we "gun prohibitionists" need to drop the "gun show loophole" wording and just go for a tighter definition of "occasional sales." I still think there is a difference between going from gun show to gun show with a table full of second-hand handguns and an "occasional sale." If these sellers never replenish their stock then I guess they are not really dealing, yet I didn't see many people at the gun show I attended who had only one or two guns for sale. I did see some walking around with just one weapon for sale, but it was not enough people to make up one of the tables that were loaded with "occasional" guns for sale.

In any case, we are not trying to stop, or even limit, these sales -- just to get the buyers checked against the background check system. Please remember that even the NRA is in favor of a background check system!

I am not even going to mention the statistics about crime guns traced to gun shows as the gun lobby has very successfully stifled the flow of information on crime gun trace data using Congress' Tiahrt amendments. While we are on the subject though, it was interesting to see the admission that 57 percent of crime guns come from less than 1 percent of licensed dealers. Now that looks like a very easy thing to deal with; any constructive ideas on that from the gun lobby? Probably not!

Nice closing with the old Second Amendment argument -- I bet there are lots of folks who wish they could find a half a sentence in the law of the land to justify them doing things that otherwise would be closely regulated. That single half a sentence, taken out of context, is such a powerful argument!

Andrew L. Goddard. Richmond.