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ACTUAL LETTERS
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ACTUAL READERS




Editor:
I fail to understand the obsession which many on the Left have with gun control. Your articles in the December/January issue seemed to equate guns with crime and domestic violence, and referred to the NRA as a special interest group who the politicians need to stand up to. What about the 99.9 percent of gun owners who do not use their guns for murders and robberies? Are their civil rights to be violated in an attempt to get guns out of the hands of gangs and criminals?
Furthermore, I cannot help but wonder why someone on the Left would be for gun control for the people, but not for the police and military. If we are to talk about outlawing guns, let's start with those who can murder someone legally while doing the will of the State.
And, I cannot help but notice a great deal of hypocrisy for someone to support the rights of women to have abortions on demand, to support the rights of those who chose to smoke marijuana to do so legally, yet oppose the rights of those who wish to own handguns to do so legally. Those issues, I feel, are ultimately the ones which must be considered in this debate.
Finally, I cannot help but notice an ultimately racist motivation for the current push for gun control. Where were the cries for gun control when most gun owners were white and rural? Now that guns are associated in the public mind with inner-city blacks, and given the popular stereotype of inner-city blacks as gang members and crack dealers, those who are otherwise progressive are calling for a repressive government crackdown on the "gun epidemic."
RLG (name withheld on request)
Seattle

[Editor's Response: In our last issue (Issue 7 Dec '93/Jan'94), we did not call for any law that would infringe upon any rights that people have under the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. We merely presented the gun control debate as it now stands and some of the proposals that have been and are now being discussed.

As for the U.S. military, we raised the issue of armed intervention by our government within the gun control stories, and in the past we have been highly critical of U.S. intervention in Iraq, Panama and elsewhere.
As for the rights of pot smokers and women seeking an abortion, these are victimless acts. This can hardly be said for many, if not most, uses of a firearm.
As for the perceived racist undertones of gun control, this is an increasingly disturbing sub-debate that, for a number of reasons, we chose not to address in the last issue. Look for a story on this in the near future.]

Dear Sirs (sic):
I have just finished reading your latest issue (Issue 7 Dec '93/Jan'94) dealing with gun control. I find it interesting, given your general anti-government stance, that you are willing to give the authorities a blank check to deal with this problem. You would probably be the first folks to scream bloody murder if the government attacked the First Amendment, yet you wish them godspeed in attacking the Second. How liberal!

It also would be helpful for your readers to know a little more about writers Doug Collins and Eric Nelson, for example, what background do they have in constitutional law that gives them the qualifications to interpret the Second Amendment for us. Are they legal scholars? I doubt it.
You have printed nothing more than personal opinion and have the audacity to call it news. You deal in propaganda.
Jim Kunkel
Seattle

Editor:
Sift through letter-writer Matthew Schonwald's muddled attack ("How Free is 'Free Love'" Dec '93-Jan '94), on guest columnist Clara Fraser ("The Love that Dare not Speak its Name in the Army," Sept '93) and you find a defense of indefensible Victorian bourgeois morality: lesbian and gay soldiers closeted or even murdered and women treated as pieces of meat.
Schonwald likes the status quo and the thought that socialists oppose his supra-rights infuriates him. He obfuscates his untenable position by casting himself as Fraser's victim. This feminist radical, he whines, wants to take away his rights to free thought and dissent - neglecting to mention that he considers these rights his exclusive domain.
Schonwald rewrites theory and history, calling Fraser a fascist because she champions sexual liberation and cultural diversity!! In fact, Nazis hated gay and lesbian freedom because it undermined their plans for women's domestic slavery (remember kinder, kirche, kŸche?) and the well-oiled functioning of the patriarchal family.
Likewise, Hitler and Co. abhorred socialists. Why? Because fascism can arise only after the working class is smashed and made subservient to capital, and Marxists offered the alternative - workers' revolution.
Large numbers of both gays and socialists were put to death in Hitler's extermination camps.
If Schonwald loves bourgeois "morality," socialists can't force him to give it up. However, we will organize against his "right" to enslave the rest of humanity merely to pander to his sense of superiority.
Linda Averill
Freedom Socialist Party
Seattle





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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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