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By Mike Cuenca | November 20, 2003
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With all due deference to Ms. Deeken (Public Forum, Nov. 14), I hope
your readers can see how ridiculous it is to equate guns with pencils,
forks, scissors and knives. Pencils, forks, scissors and knives are
tools and utensils. Guns have no purpose other than the taking of life,
whether for hunting or defense or assault.
Guns are devices filled with explosive charges that expel pieces of
metal at lethal speed. Some guns are small enough to conceal in a
pocket, while other guns, commonly known as cannons, are the size of
railroad cars and larger. They're all designed and built expressly to
kill.
To kill you with a knife, a person must get within an arm's length,
which gives you an opportunity to flee and/or defend yourself against
that weapon. But someone with a firearm can kill "remotely," without
having to get within your personal space. They can kill from across a
room, across a city park, across the open space between a schoolbook
warehouse and a car on a city street (John F. Kennedy), or from an open
window across the street from a motel balcony (Martin Luther King Jr.).
Once they squeeze that trigger, you cannot stop the bullet from
entering your flesh. A person with a firearm can kill indiscriminately,
without personal contact, and by accident, even from a distance.
According to a 2000 Harvard study, 30,000 people are killed with
firearms and an additional 65,000 are wounded each year. Comparatively,
according to the U.S. Department of Justice, 2,090 people were murdered
with knives in 2000.
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Originally published by the Lawrence Journal-World.
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