Letters

Parking stance perfect

Miss Toland:

Your article addressing the parking situation in downtown was dead on. Luckily I work at the Exploreum, where our end of downtown isn’t as bad, although it could be better. And you couldn’t be more right when you pointed out the over-zealousness of the retired officers.

Last month I witnessed one of them ticket a county police officer on Dauphin Street in front of the Spot of Tea. Obviously no one is safe from parking Nazis.

Matt Mitchell

We don’t need gun buybacks!

To the editor:

I enjoyed reading the articles in last week’s Press-Register regarding the Gun Buyback program. The articles made me chuckle. If you are not familiar with the program, it’s where the city asks people to turn in their guns in exchange for a $100 gift certificate at Wal-Mart. No questions asked. Afterwards, the guns are destroyed. What a bunch of feel-good nonsense!

Do you truly believe that real criminals are going to turn in operational weapons? Certainly, you don’t. They might turn in a broken gun so they can spend $100 at Wal-Mart to buy another gun or maybe ammo for their working guns. Or they simply might just buy beer or wine at Wal-Mart so they can get intoxicated enough to commit their next crime.

I then read an article regarding antique guns being turned in to the program that were worth as much as $500-$1,000. So you have a bunch of folks who don’t know what they have in their possession turning in guns for which they have no clue of the use or value. Sounds like criminals to me! We better get those guns off the streets (or out of closets)! No matter that the guns are worth something and would never be used in the commission of a crime, they must be destroyed.

Police Chief Garrett then made the most ludicrous statement. He said the antiques would not be saved because they could be stolen later and used to kill someone. There is more to this statement than meets the eye. It says a tremendous deal about Garrett. It would appear that he does not want any private citizen to own a gun because it might get stolen and used in the commission of a crime. That is a dangerous and condescending proposition.

The Second Amendment must mean nothing. I wonder if a copy of the Bill of Rights sits next to his toilet so when he runs out of TP, he can just use that. Constitution be damned! I guess only the elite police (the government) may have guns. You, the citizens cannot be trusted. You are too stupid to have guns just lying around the house. Never mind that an armed citizen is one of the biggest deterrents to crime. According to the MPD, no one should be armed, except the criminals, of course.

I then saw J. D. Crowe’s Press-Register cartoon on Aug. 16. It brought a tear to my eye. Truly, it did. He wants the guns to be transformed into art. Touching, huh? The tears in my eyes were from laughter. What a joke!

However, he did expose an important point. Liberals love to make themselves feel good. As long as they feel good, it doesn’t matter how ridiculous to program is or how minute the results may be. The buyback program will not reduce violent crime, not one iota. In fact, it may have the opposite effect. The folks who turned in the guns are now defenseless. Now that criminals know they don’t have protection, it’s open season. Oh well, as long as J. D. Crowe can make a meaningless piece of art, it was worth it! Maybe we can hold hands and dance around it.

I want to take this last paragraph to announce the new MPD buyback program. It’s not limited to just to guns. Starting at 9:00 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2007, the MPD will be buying backing all ropes, lead pipes, knives and candlesticks, sponsored by Clue, the board game. Wal-Mart will also sponsor the program again.

Maybe they are the real criminals here. Wow, they made out like bandits!

Tom Walsh

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