To the editor: Matt Welch asks, “How exactly would gun control … improve matters?” (“Black Lives Matter and Michael Bloomberg: the oddest couple?,” Op-Ed, Nov. 20)

How about reinstating the assault weapons ban? These have become the firearms of choice for homegrown school shooters and international terrorists alike.

A few years ago, Anders Behring Breivik managed to kill 69 of his fellow Norwegians on the island of Utøya, most of those with a Mini-14 assault rifle. If Breivik had been armed with a couple of revolvers, the toll would have been far less.

The National Rifle Assn. argues that the vast majority of assault rifle owners are law-abiding and that these weapons aren’t often used in ordinary street crime. Both true. But these weapons are designed for mass killing, as the occasional lone-wolf killer keeps reminding us.


Access to them is easy, even legal, in much of our country, a fact we’ll regret when Paris-style terrorism comes to our shores.

Alan Pierpoint, Arcadia

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