Letters to the Editor
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‘Shooting Blanks’
Boston’s mayor, Thomas Menino, says lax gun laws in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, are responsible for gun violence in Boston, Mass. [“Shooting Blanks,” Editorial, January 4, 2006]. New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, blames guns from Florida, Georgia, and Virginia.
Vermont has about the same number of people as Boston. Boston has strict gun control; Vermont has none. (Anyone who can legally buy a gun can carry it concealed in Vermont, no license needed.)
As The New York Sun said in its editorial:
“Some states have enjoyed reductions in violent crime after enacting right-to-carry laws that increased the number of legal guns on the streets. It’s harder to find a venue where reducing the number of legal guns correlates with the reduction in gun crimes.
“In the years following enactment of 1968’s Gun Control Act, crime shot up, increasing 17.7% in one year alone – between 1969 and 1970 – in New York State. After the 1994 assault weapons ban expired last year, violent crime rates continued to fall in large cities.
“The plunge in violent crime in New York in the 1990s may have been due to many factors, but it’s going to be hard for the mayor to argue that gun control is one of them. The start of the decline predated enactment of the two signature gun laws of the decade, the Brady Act and the assault weapons ban. We detailed all these facts in our editorial of October 21, 2005, ‘Good Sense on Guns.'”
JACK ANDERSON
(Formerly of Washington Heights) Newbury, Vt.
‘Poland Re-Ups’
Thanks for your editorial about Poland [“Poland Re-Ups,” December 30, 2005].
Why we are staying with America? Because we are an ally, a true ally.
You understand it. And I hope the United States government understand it too.
JACEK R. ROZEWICZ
Czestochowa Poland
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