Legislature Curbs Cheap Handguns

Re “Assembly, Senate Approve Curbs on Cheap Handguns,” June 5: More useless bills by our spineless state representatives! It certainly was not stricter gun controls that accounted for the significant drop in violent crime from 1995 to 1996. There were more guns in ’96 than in ’95 (including cheap ones), so where is the correlation to gun crime that these bills are based on?

Interesting comments by two assemblymen who voted for the bill. Lou Papan: “The politics of it made me vote for it. I vacillated, if you want to know the truth.” And Brooks Firestone: “We are elected by the people to try to do the right thing. . . . You do the best you can. That is a platitude, but man, it’s true.”

So apparently, if you can’t do the right thing, like clamp down on gangs or keep criminals in jail, then you do what you can. In this case you do it to lawful citizens, especially low-income ones. Then hope they don’t realize you’ve risked nothing in your politically correct career and done less to really protect them.

MICHAEL E. SMITH

Placentia

* Thank you for the commentary on gunfire and death by Robin Yaesha Deane (“Live Longer, Feel Better--and Duck,” June 4).

We are telling our Danish friends not to visit the U.S. anymore. Their friend was killed in the Empire State Building in New York. It’s not safe here.

RUTH and LARRY ROSEN

Santa Monica

* The rampant proliferation of weaponry in this country is a gross obscenity. For some time now I have focused my anger on the NRA. I now feel, however, that its position is consistent with the self-interest of all profit-making institutions. After all, it represents arms manufacturers and dealers whose only interest is in peddling more merchandise.

The real evil in this equation is represented by the legislators who have sold their soul to the devil by accepting PAC money from the NRA and thus do its bidding on the floors of the various legislatures around the country. This is especially troubling because it flies in the face of statistics which show the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of strict gun control.

RUSSELL BLINICK

Woodland Hills