Do assault weapons make us safer?
DEAR EDITOR:
If I taught English instead of Finance, I'd use Josh Perschbacher's Oct 12 column [From my cold dead hands: Part II] as a classroom example of bad writing.
Mr. Perschbacher's introductory paragraph ends with "Mayor Daley and Gov. Blagojevich have vowed to 'remedy' the recent assault weapon ban expiration with legislation at the state level. These gun control laws only make Illinois citizens easy targets for criminals."
I was intrigued and read on to see how owning an assult weapon would make me safer.
Unfortunately, rest of the article contained no further references to assult weapons.
Instead, Mr. Perschbacher discussed completely different issues (specifically, the benefits of concealed weapons and handgun ownership), and apparently just inferred that assult weapons must also be a good idea.
Analogously, I presume one should conclude that, because lettuce and spinach can be part of a nutritious diet, it follows that poison ivy is a good choice for a salad, too.
Oh, I suppose that if a gang of thugs broke into my house and were hiding behind my refrigerator, owning an assult weapon might make me feel a little safer.
Barring that possibility, I await Mr. Perschbacher's evidence that lifting the ban on assult weapons is a good idea. Since his article makes reference to making security guards' and policemen's jobs easier, he might want to start by asking them what they think of making assault weapons more readily available to the public.
Jim Musumeci
associate professor, finance department
[Macro error: Can't include because the file is larger than 32767 characters.]
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