Robert Wassman’s Aug. 13 letter, “One city’s gun strategy works,” concerning the gun laws in Kennesaw, Ga., caused me to wonder just how much violence that small town had endured that made its citizens feel so threatened.
Kennesaw is a small city of about the same size as Walla Walla; however, the difference is that Kennesaw is, essentially, a suburb of Atlanta, population of over half a million which, like most cities, has serious crime problems. Perhaps this proximity was partly the reason why Kennesaw passed a law requiring gun ownership.
I do not pretend to be an expert on the subject of guns and gun ownership, but I do believe that even if everyone in the movie theater in Colorado had carried a revolver, they still might not have been able to survive the speed and power of an AK-47 or any other assault-type weapon, especially since the gunman wore body armor. These are guns that were invented and manufactured specifically to kill people, and I do not believe that controlling them, specifically, would, to quote Wassman; “render people utterly defenseless so government can do anything they want to them.” We do not live in a “totalitarian regime,” and controlling assault weapons will not make it so.
Sheila G. Hudson
Vancouver