Letters | Readers Respond: Gun Crimes

The editorial "Fighting violent crime: Wage war on causes" (Nov. 18), on the need for more funding for education to help reduce crime, drew a number of responses, as did other recent stories related to guns and crime.

Rayna Goldfarb

English teacher

Abraham Lincoln High School

The editorial "Wage war on causes" attributes violent crime to unemployment, poverty, and bad schools. Again, schools are targeted for producing or contributing to violent behavior. No one who has ever been in a Philadelphia high school could write such a canard.

Teachers and administrators do not create violent students; we inherit them from violent homes. My students defend the beatings and corporal punishment they receive at home as the best way to discipline children. Nothing I can say ever dissuades them from this deeply held belief.

Violence starts in violent homes. Stop blaming the schools!

Hal Real

Philadelphia

Many thanks for the excellent editorial on the dire need for a cohesive national urban policy to address the factors producing the crime with which we must all live - and, some of us, die.

What a disgrace to think that 40 years after the "war on poverty," we see little or no positive residual impact on U.S. cities of that commitment to vastly improve urban education, wipe out urban poverty and drastically reduce urban unemployment. Not only do the presidential candidates need to detail a policy to address this issue and put it on the national agenda, but also we all need to propel it to the top of the national agenda.

Steven M. Casale

Yeadon

I applaud your editorial that the causes of violent crime need to be addressed. But what about the fatherlessness among African Americans as a serious cause of violence and criminality?

In the Nov. 18 New York Times, an article by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. says, "Today, 69 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, while 45 percent of black households with children are headed by women."

You mention the importance of high-quality education, but parental presence, support and encouragement are also important. I am reminded of a highly successful black man who spoke to a group of which I was a part. He said his success in school was due in significant measure to the threat of his father's size 13 shoe on his rear end. Rather difficult to do if there is no father.

Larry Momorella

Warminster

» READ MORE: larrymomorella@yahoo.com

Thanks to Gov. Rendell for trying to pass some commonsense gun laws (Inquirer, Nov. 21). Unfortunately, the NRA and many lawmakers continue to put their perceived "gun rights" before safer communities for the rest of us. We need to change the mind-set that the passage of any gun law is an infringement on our rights.

I believe in my Second Amendment rights, and I'm not paranoid enough to fear that my legally purchased guns will someday be confiscated. But I'm also willing to accept some restrictions to help curb the madness. This is especially true in Philadelphia, where the ability to deal with its own problems should not be opposed by organizations and lawmakers who don't have to live with the murders.

Colin A. Hanna

West Chester

» READ MORE: Colin@Hanna.net

Gov. Rendell's testimony before the State House Judiciary Committee on behalf of three gun-control bills (Nov. 21) was either uncharacteristically naïve or profoundly cynical.

For example, he must know that Washington has had a ban on the ownership of handguns for over 30 years, a much more restrictive measure than the proposed handgun purchase limitation that he favors for Philadelphia, yet Washington's murder rate is substantially higher than Philadelphia's: 35.8 per 100,000 residents versus 22.2. This suggests that banning handgun sales does not lead to lower homicide rates, as John R. Lott Jr. argues in

More Guns, Less Crime

.

The real problem lies with the city's leadership. While murders in Philadelphia have increased, arrest and conviction rates for murder have fallen. Philadelphia has become the city in which violent criminals get away with murder.

Mike Felker

Philadelphia

Handguns have made a combat zone of Pennsylvania, wreaking havoc from the inner city to rural communities.

As a medic with the Marines in Vietnam, I tried to save the victims of guns and other weapons; I am sick of the handgun violence in our state - stronger handgun laws will help end that violence.

Shame on Pennsylvania House Speaker Dennis O'Brien for listening to the National Rifle Association and ignoring Pennsylvanian voters who demand sensible handgun legislation ("Why can't O'Brien say G-U-N? Nov. 18).

It is imperative that we have legislators who are not influenced by the gun lobby.

Laws limiting handgun purchases to one a month and requiring reporting of lost or stolen weapons are a step toward ending the violence, toward ending the death and injury caused by handguns.

We must do all we can to stop the carnage, to end the casualties of war caused by handguns in Pennsylvania. We must demand that O'Brien and other legislators listen to us and not the NRA.

Jonathan Goldstein

Narberth

» READ MORE: jonathan@pobox.com

Gov. Rendell is teeth-clenching, lectern-banging angry that he can't get a new one-gun-a-month bill passed through the General Assembly. He says he's just got to have it to stop the gun violence that occurs when straw purchasers buy guns for people who are otherwise unable to purchase firearms legally.

Gun-control advocates trot out this canard every time they want to pass laws to restrict legitimate gun ownership.

Using one's own clean record to purchase a gun for someone who is not allowed to own a gun is called a straw purchase. Gun-control groups would have us believe that this is legal in Pennsylvania. It is illegal under federal law, and last time I checked, federal law still applied in Pennsylvania.

Why is the governor so desperate to have one-gun-a-month when we're not working in concert with federal authorities to prosecute every straw-gun purchaser we can lay our hands on?