Too many guns or not enough?
John M. Crisp offered an argument for guns increasingly dominating the American landscape that was mostly anecdotal. (“Rise of guns in our culture will echo for generations,” Opinion, March 9). On the one hand, he thinks we have too many guns while, on the other, he says guns for protection are okay. He does not offer any solution to the dilemma presented by his view and the one verifiable statistic offered in this hand-wringer – that 32,351 people were killed by gunfire in 2010 – is unsupported. FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the total number killed by firearms in the year 2010 was 8,874, as compared to the 32,351 reported in Crisp’s column. What was his data source? We had 32,885 traffic fatalities in 2010, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but that is another story.
JIM IRVIN, CANTON
Great roadside assistance
On March 2, my husband and I were driving through Atlanta on our way home to Waynesville. We hit something in the road and immediately knew that we had a flat tire. My husband said, “We are going to need roadside assistance.” A roadside assistance truck had pulled up behind our car. This young man got out of the car and offered to fix our tire, but quickly determined that not only both tires on the left side of the car were flat, both rims were bent. He put the tires and rims and both of us into his own car and drove us to a tire shop in Conley. He then drove us back to our car and put the tires with the fixed rims back onto our car. This young man, owner of This roadside assistance business, and his passenger provided us with emotional and physical support as my husband had just had surgery in Birmingham weeks earlier. His fee was honest and affordable. A real credit to your city.
CAROL BRENNAN, WAYNESVILLE, N.C.
Stay healthy
(“Health care costs on decline,” News, March 10) is an effort to assign credit to Obamacare despite its failure. It is equivalent to praise for the Titanic’s on-board entertainment while ignoring the ship’s sinking. Health care costs aren’t really declining, merely rising more slowly, due in large part to the use of health savings accounts, which preceded Obamacare. The claim that there were “fewer people without health insurance before the law” is another sleight of hand. Proponents knew that the uninsured population before Obamacare was a fraction of the claimed 30 to 40 million. What the article ignores is the negative impact that this law has had on the delivery of quality care. Stay healthy.
DENNIS MCGOWAN, SNELLVILLE
