Letter: Gun laws don’t make us safer

In his Jan. 23 guest column 'Balance all interests when crafting gun laws,” Jeremy Brigham said he'd like to live ' ... without fear or need to defend myself at any moment.” Most of us would, just as we'd like to be free of cancer, poverty, terrorists or international wars. However, we must live in the real world that exists.

He went on to say, 'States with the best laws regarding guns are the states where the gun death rates for homicides, suicides and accidents are the lowest.”

This argument is laughable. A continuing news story all last year was the record number of homicides in Chicago, which, along with the rest of Illinois, has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.

California and New York have similarly draconian anti-gun laws. The homicide rates in their major cities, LA and NYC, closely trail Chicago.

I think most of us would feel safer in states like Ohio, Iowa or Arizona where the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gets more respect.

Dean Varner

Cedar Rapids