SECOND AMENDMENT
Guns aren’t necessary
to defend nonviolence
The mistakes implicit in the letter written in support of gun ownership are characteristic of the assumptions that underlie our violent culture (“Carrying a firearm dissuades violence,” Readers write, Opinion, Jan. 22).
The writer makes the mistake of assuming both that physical force can, in fact, really be enough to get us to give up that which we hold most dear, like our convictions, and that violence is needed to protect what really matters in this life. The examples of the great pillars of nonviolence, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., directly conflict with such assumptions, and should move us away from the detrimental mindset they perpetuate.
SANJAY LAL, MORROW
Firearms still needed
to safeguard liberties
The personal right to keep and bear arms is still necessary for a free state. The fact that private arms cannot compete with a modern military arsenal changes nothing.
When Congress passed the Bill of Rights, it knew farmers and merchants did not have artillery, cavalry and accouterments to field an army. The threat to liberty foreseen in the Bill of Rights was not a bayonet charge, but the denial of speech, the press, personal security or public trial to individuals.
Likewise, the prison camps of modern police states were not populated with the losing side of pitched battles, but with individuals arrested one by one, neighborhood by neighborhood. This is where liberty is lost, or where the unabridged right of the people to keep and bear arms contributes to a free state.
DENNIS JOHNSON, DULUTH
TECHNOLOGY
Smart phones distract
from things that matter
Everywhere I go in Atlanta, I see people distracted by their “smart” phones. I realize there’s lots of great information available 24 hours a day, seven days a week using these devices.
However, I see parents who believe they are spending quality time with their children, when they are giving most of their attention to these phones. I see drivers paying more attention to their phones than the roads. I dine at restaurants and watch people ignore their dining companions to bang away on these phones.
I am not perfect, and can also be distracted by technology. However, so many people are only giving the people they are with and the things they are doing a fraction of their attention that I think “smart” phones make people dumber.
JONI PELTA, ATLANTA
FOOTBALL
Our thanks to Falcons,
champions regardless
Thank you to the Atlanta Falcons for an exciting and (at times) heart-stopping season. You are the best team in the NFC!
Even though you didn’t make it all the way to the Super Bowl, you are the champions in my book.
SANDRA MEIERHOFER, COLLEGE PARK
