Show the NRA who’s in charge
I have been in Chattanooga for more than 40 years. I live now on Signal Mountain. When I was young, I belonged to a gun club and the NRA. My mother thought that a Southern boy should learn how to shoot a rifle. So I did target practice for years with a bolt action single shot rifle.
That is worlds away from Bushmaster assault rifles with magazines that can hold 30 or more rounds. Such weapons are not what the framers of the Second Amendment had in mind. That amendment was ratified in 1791 when there was no active army on duty. It was designed to make possible a well-regulated militia in case there was a need to defend the country from invasion.
I urge everyone to support legislation that will ban assault weapons which have been used in more than one mass killing this year. Those guns are not appropriate for hunting purposes. They are useful only to kill innocent people like the 20 5- or 6-year-old children in that small Connecticut town. Show the NRA that we, the people, are in charge of this country and not an irresponsible gun lobby that is complicit in the murder of innocent people.
MIKE RUSSELL, Signal Mountain
Protect children in public places
I approve of the ideas Thursday’s Times Free Press letter titled “Moderate gun control needed.” Like many who believe in control of assault weapons, I too was a hunter as a youth and young adult, and still believe in being allowed to own and use unregistered weapons for hunting and other sports like target shooting.