To the heart of the problem.

Editor–The Press-Enterprise:

In response to the article on the recent conference on gun control at RCC: First, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, constitutional right guaranteed to every law-abiding citizen of the United States.

Second, if you ban guns, people will kill each other with knives. If you ban knives, people will rob and kill with sticks and stones. Ban sticks and stones, people will maim and kill with their bare hands. Where does it stop? The problem is not inanimate objects, it's the heart of man.

Michael A. Baker.   (Printed March 03, 1995)

Loaded.

Editor–The Press-Enterprise:

This is in response to Mary McGrory's ridiculous tirade against Virginia's new law permitting its citizens to carry concealed weapons, in her column of July 10. She made clear her naivete of gun ownership and the mindset of the nation!

Take California for example. After the riots, handgun sales across the nation soared. How many of those guns do you think are tucked away in their owners' nightstands, unloaded and secure? Be realistic! A good majority of those firearms are being carried concealed, unlicensed, in the cars and on the persons of responsible citizens who know how to shoot them and when to shoot them. And with no huge increase in firearms-related murders, as McGrory stated.

Why? Because the law-abiding are realizing the "state" cannot protect them and are taking responsibility for their own safety and protection. . . .

Michael A. Baker.   (Printed July 16, 1995)

Taking back the streets.

Editor–The Press-Enterprise:

In response to your editorial concerning the passage in the State Assembly of the bill that would make it easier to obtain a concealed weapons permit, you stated: "It should be remembered that those who support this bill, on an issue this large and basic, are expressing no confidence in the judgment of law enforcement leadership regarding matters of public safety." I say: Exactly.

The utter failure of gun control legislation's aside, where were the police when L.A. was being looted and burned? Where were the police when those innocent people were being slaughtered like sheep in San Ysidro? When that little girl and her family were being ambushed on that dead end street in Cypress Park? And the list goes on and on.

I think the time is soon coming when the law abiding people of this state are going to seize the initiative and take their streets back from the predators that roam them, exercising their right to self defense. . . .

Michael A. Baker.   (Printed February 13, 1996)

Fighting back.

Editor–The Press-Enterprise:

I read, with some sympathy, the article concerning the new push for more useless gun-control measures in the California Legislature – Press-Enterprise, April 8 – now a state with some of the most restrictive gun-control laws in the nation.

I would think the law-abiding citizens of California should now be seeing through these hollow, ridiculous attempt at "crime control" as nothing more than governmental intrusions on their own constitutional rights, seeing how they are the only ones affected by them. Did any current laws stop the lunatic criminals that initiated the recent, much televised, West Hollywood bank robbery? Every firearm in their possession was "banned."

. . . The tragic, endless slaughter of the defenseless sheep of our society by the criminal wolves that continually prey on them will not stop, regardless of the ordinance enacted, until the sheep take responsibility for their own lives, demand the right to self defense without fear of state prosecution, and start to bite back!

Michael A. Baker.   (Printed April 14, 1997)

The collection will continue. . . .