To the editor: The Times Editorial Board tells us it’s obvious that easy access to guns results in more suicides and homicides, and there are 36,000 firearm deaths each year nationally.

If we want to reduce that number, we have to make firearms less accessible. But look at the size of the problem: In our state alone, more than one-quarter of households own firearms. That’s a lot of guns already in circulation.

How do you reduce the number of guns that people already possess? With a buy-back program? But if you pay someone, say, $250 for an old revolver, what’s to prevent that person from putting the money toward a new semiautomatic handgun?

The only way of making the millions of guns already in the possession of millions of Americans less accessible is with the “C” word: confiscation.


Bill Gravlin, Rancho Palos Verdes

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To the editor: The National Rifle Assn. has degenerated from an organization that taught marksmanship and firearm safety to an unabashed lobbying organization for the firearms industry. Its primary goal is profits for gun manufacturers.

What the NRA is doing is endangering the American public to maximize sales and profits of their clients. Its favorite tactic is to viciously attack any legislator who proposes any restrictions on firearm sales, no matter how sensible.


The blue states cited for their lower suicide rates have legislators with a strong enough voter support base to resist the NRA, resulting in fewer gun deaths per capita than the national average. When will the rest of the country wake up?

Al Barrett, Santa Monica

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