Gun comments absurdChuck Muth’s commentary on guns and hammers that appeared in the Nevada Appeal on Jan. 4 was pretty absurd.How many times in the history of violence in America has a deranged person walked into a movie theater wielding an “assault hammer” and killed or wounded 60 people? Or how many times has someone entered an elementary school and hammered to death 20 small children? Do police worry about an armed felon with a hammer? What about accidental death or suicide by hammer?Often common-sense discussion of gun violence is misdirected by such ridiculous false comparisons. These add no value to the discussion. A more informative comparison is automobile safety. There are many violent deaths by automobile and we as a society try and regulate the use of automobiles and make them safer to operate.We have to evaluate the usefulness to our society of these objects by looking at risk/benefit analysis. Automobiles have a design function to provide transportation, hammers function to provide a tool to build and be productive. Guns are designed to kill things.Automobile benefits outweigh the risk of deaths, thus we do not eliminate autos but form laws and safety devices that minimize the risks while maximizing the benefits. We should as a society regulate the lethality of gun designs and minimize the risk of death. Assault rifles with high-capacity clips move this risk/benefit consideration far too much toward high risk and low benefit to our society.John HartleyDaytonGun remarks praisedAfter reading the commentary by Chuck Muth in Friday’s Appeal, I must say it was really a breath of fresh air!Thank you so much, Chuck, for standing up for the rights given to us by the Second Amendment when all the news media are really out to strip us of those rights!Keep up the good work!Jim PickelMinden
