Gun Laws

“I would like to thank the organizers of the Maugansville Ruritan Christmas evening. The Santa goes above and beyond, by reading a story and making contact with each and every child. The volunteers, young and old, are very thoughtful, and the activities, snacks and crafts are nicely done. I took my children this year and last, and just wanted to acknowledge how nice it is.” - Hagerstown “Anyone hear from the NRA lately? Yes, other ways can be used to kill, but the mass murderers are using guns.

As Ron Jones lodged his shotgun against his shoulder Friday night, took aim and fired, a heaviness hung over the Lower Providence Rod & Gun Club's weekly trapshoot in Montgomery County as thick as the smoke that belched from his firearm. Across the state, sportsmen like Jones have watched with trepidation as talk of tighter gun laws echoes from Washington to Harrisburg, Pa., since 20 children and six adults were killed in a Connecticut school by a man with a semiautomatic rifle. Now, amid rising calls for state and federal bans on assault weapons and high-volume ammo clips, the electoral might of Pennsylvania gun owners might be tested anew.

There’s no answer to Callaham’s question To the editor: Art Callaham asks ( Jan. 23 and Feb. 4 ), “Where do we draw the line between public safety and individual (gun) rights?” The question assumes that there is a correlation between gun laws and public safety. Is there? Search for information on gun laws vis-à-vis gun violence and you quickly learn that the parties on both sides of the gun debate claim polar opposite things, complete with statistics, graphs and charts.

I am writing to respond to the column by Dan K. Thomasson in The (July 20) Herald Mail. Thomasson is unhappy with the Supreme Court because of Justice Alito's opinion in the recent McDonald case, in which the court ruled that the Chicago law forbidding handguns in the home was unconstitutional. Thomasson claims that the National Rifle Association "disdains to bring sanity into the gun debate. " Really? I retired from the legal office of the NRA and do not recall ever being instructed to omit sanity from a legal argument.

"About the students paying for parking, do the teachers pay for their parking? I hope so. They want the kids to pay for everything else, and where are these kids getting this money? And another thing, I worked for the county and a friend of mine worked for the city, and we had to pay parking. So I think the teachers should have to pay for their parking, and what these kids ought to do is go to the parks around and see if they could rent parking spaces for them. " - Indian Springs "It was 10:45 a.m. Wednesday the 19th.