Letter: Gun Safety

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Letter to the Editor

When I was a little tyke, perhaps five or six years old, I went with an older sister to visit a friend of hers. The friend was married to a man employed as a long haul truck driver. As the girls were chatting in the kitchen of the friend’s apartment, I went exploring the apartment. I wandered into the bedroom and there, on the bedside table, I saw a gun.

The only guns that I myself had ever seen were cap guns—a great toy for playing cops and robbers—so I went over, picked it up and pointed it at the window. However, I noticed that it was so much bigger and heavier than any cap gun I had ever seen.

“Oh, wow,” I realized. “This must be a real gun.” 

I very, very carefully put it right back where I found it and when I went back into the kitchen, I told the ladies what I had seen.

“Oh, Davy, it’s a real gun. My husband takes it along when he’s driving those big trucks from city to city late at night. He needs it to protect himself from robbers and from hold-up men. I’m glad you didn’t try to shoot it. Guns are dangerous and can kill people, even little kids.”

I am now 98-years-old and I still vividly remember picking up that gun, pointing it and just-in-time realizing that it was the real thing. Had I not become aware of that at the time, I might not be here to report about it. Now, more than ever, guns are in the hands of people who, as almost all daily news reports confirm, should not have had firearms available to them. People have been crippled or killed as a result.

The horrific carnage that was reported in Las Vegas in this morning’s news was the result of lethal firearms being in the hands of a person who should not have had such weapons available. 

Wake up National Rifle Association. Rouse yourself Mr. President. Start to make some attempt at limiting the possession of lethal weapons to those who have a reasonable need for them.

David Feldman