To the editor:

In reading Mr. Fletcher’s November 23 criticism of an earlier Barrington Times opinion piece, I reflected on my first encounter with “gun safety”. I was about seven or eight years old and my father, an NYPD detective, asked me to go for a ride with him. We drove over the Outterbridge  in the early morning. He stopped on the bridge and took out a sack filled with pearl handled pistols he won at shooting competitions. Just before he hurled them into the river he said to me ”Guns kill people, son. Nobody – not even a cop – needs more than one.”

The arguments that Mr. Fletcher uses are evasive and misleading on the issues of gun violence and 2nd Amendment gun rights..

He states that the 1994 assault weapon ban “did not reduce gun violence”. What it did do, as published in the NIH report from 2019, was produce a “70% reduction in mass shooting related deaths” compared to the decade before the ban. Further, the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019 reported a 43% reduction in gun massacre deaths during the ban, and a 243% increase in gun massacre deaths in the decade after the band expired. These are not unfounded talking points or someone’s opinion. These are traceable facts.

Mr. Fletcher suggests that the majority of the “mass murders” (defined as involving 4 or more victims) were committed by gangs. Oh, that’s ok then-unless you or another innocent is on the wrong end of a stray bullet; or your loved one is a cop facing those “2nd Amendment protected citizens” with assault weapons. 

The statement of many 2nd Amendment proponents that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment in 1789 was to protect against the tyranny of its own government for all time periods, is opinion-not fact. Strict Constructionists might claim that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment at the time of its creation was directed at the British, fearing that they would initiate an invasion- just has happened in 1812. There was no federal military at that time. Protection was up to the local militias. 

Think what would have happened if the Secret Service had ceded to President Trump’s instruction to remove the metal detectors at his January 6, D.C. rally- enabling arming of the insurrectionists? The attack on our Capital may have accomplished the attempted coup-making that tyranny successful.

It is false that the 2nd Amendment Heller decision protects assault weapons. Justice Scalia clearly stated that “weapons in common use, can still be regulated when determined to be dangerous and unusual”.

The US Supreme Court has not yet determined exactly what “common use” is. It is possible that they will side with gun-rights proponents, but note that from 1789 to the 2008 Heller decision, gun ownership was NOT an unregulated individual right. The law changes. People’s perspectives change. Public opinion changes-but facts are facts. Guns kill people. 

Another popular “2nd Amendment protection” trope is that all we need to do to reduce gun violence is to” fix” the mental health problem. We should address the mental health challenges in our country. We should also ban assault weapons and support common sense gun safety- and protect every individual’s 1st Amendment right to live without the fear of our kids being mowed down in another school mass shooting, or being at a movie theater or concert when someone with a grudge decides to shoot up the place. The fact is-guns kill people, and we need stronger gun safety laws.

Chris Clyne

Barrington