Let's forget all the heated pro and con rhetoric and examine Sunday guest columnist Chris Cox's rationale for approving concealed-carry of firearms from a logical point of view - literally, with logic as a systematic approach to reasoning.

Cox's argument - that because 48 other states have laws permitting concealed weapons to be carried, Wisconsin should too - is flawed in terms of formal logic.

Cox is using one of the most simplistic and erroneous of all logical fallacies - the appeal to common practice - an argument that because many people are doing something, it must be right. Logic 101 teaches the absurdity of this reasoning.

People who rely on the appeal to common practice to make a point are exercising the same fatal logic and behavior as lemmings. The citizens of Wisconsin are far more sensible, intelligent and logical than that. We are Badgers, not lemmings.

- Dennis B. Appleton, Madison