My letter to her.
edit: I also CC'd all the managers at the newspaper as well. You can find their email addresses on the "Contact Us" page on the newspaper website.
Laura,
I'll qualify this letter by saying that I'm a very well-educated professional, with experience living and studying abroad in Europe for over a decade. I have a hard science degree combined with a liberal arts minor from one of the largest universities in the country (and best academically), from one of the top two academic programs in my field of study, and I am currently responsible for a majority of the software systems that run a nine billion dollar technology products' manufacturing plant. I have traveled to over 30 countries on four continents to learn their cultures, and I speak 3 foreign languages.
I read your article titled, "Gun lovers disarm control advocates", and I have to voice my strong disagreement with your views. This is a huge topic for discussion, but at a most basic level of debate founded purely on statistics, it has been shown that those states in the USA that have banned guns have the highest crime rates now, and their crime rate is still increasing. States that have loosened gun control laws, especially those that have created licensed concealed handgun carry, have experienced a decrease in their violent crime rate.
This may seem unintuitive at first, as you would think that fewer guns would translate into less crime. But by disarming the law-abiding citizens, there is nothing to stop criminals from preying on the public with their illegal guns. Putting guns in the hands of responsible citizens and allowing them to protect their own Liberty is a deterrent to crime. (Please see this article to read about the doubling of gun crimes, ten years after Britain banned handguns: http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2317307.ece .)
We should not disarm our citizens as other countries have done. Jefferson said that democracy must be fiercely guarded, lest tyranny creep in and take over. Our government was created for the sole purpose to guarantee Liberty to its citizens. The Bill of Rights was how the founders tried to ensure that we would continue to inherit those freedoms from the generations before us. We have those rights for a reason and we should not relinquish one iota of those freedoms.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Best Regards,
Jason Phillips
Austin, Texas
edit: I also CC'd all the managers at the newspaper as well. You can find their email addresses on the "Contact Us" page on the newspaper website.