Editor, Times-Union: In the February 2000 issue of "Guns and Ammo" is an article that everyone who owns a firearm should read.
On April 28, 1996, a maniac shot 35 people in Port Arthur, [Australia]. The media started screaming about the evils of assault firearms. In just 12 days, laws were passed against owning firearms. In two weeks, from April 28 to May 10, millions of firearms were deemed illegal. The government totally banned all semi-auto rifles, shotguns and 22s. Ownership of any self-loading firearm was made a serious crime, punishable by multiple years in prison.
These nuts that claim taking all the firearms away will decrease crime are wrong again.
In 1997, just 12 months after these laws were passed, across the continent, homicides are up 3.2 percent, armed robberies are up 44 percent and assaults are up 8.6 percent. In the state of Victoria, 300 percent increase in homicides. In 1998, in the state of South Australia, robbery with a firearm increased nearly 60 percent. In 1999, assault rates in New South Wales increased about 20 percent.
You would have to be an idiot not to see what's going on. You take firearms away from law-abiding citizens and what happens? Only the criminals have them.
So just remember if you own a firearm of any kind, they are not safe from these gun-grabbing fools. Just look at Australia, they have learned the hard way. So if you want somebody to help protect your rights to own a firearm, join the NRA. If you don't, you may find yourself handing over your firearm someday.
Allen M. VanNess Warsaw
Millennium Edition
Editor, Times-Union: I knew David Slone to be good reporter, but his insert in the Friday, Dec. 31, 1999, Times-Union is superb.
As a result of his painstaking research, "A Century of Change" in Kosciusko County documented tidbits that I found to be informative, interesting and intriguing. And we think the big cities and "other" places, not here, have all the robberies, drive-by shootings, rapes, strikes and crime in general. The "good" happenings were interspersed to make for a balance.
