To the editor:

In response to Mr. Nolan’s letter to the Call on Jan. 17, I would like to take a very opposite view.

First of all, the New York Times’ editorial page is not a good, unbiased source for any view.

Remember, it was New Yorkers who irresponsibly published a list of all legal, law-abiding owners of guns.

This has already exposed a former police officer to have his home broken into and guns stolen.

I would then point out that Times reporter Elizabeth Rosenthal was very wrong to state that places with more guns have more violent deaths.

It has been statistically proven that where concealed carry is allowed, gun crimes have gone down.

Every one of the mass murders occurred on grounds that were “Gun Free.”

The next statistic is that every one of the perpetrators had a background of mental problems and/or had been on in some cases prescribed medication. The next problem is that the reporting media, and I would include the print media, cannot seem to get the “facts” correct in reporting these tragic events.

Let’s take the horrible act by a very troubled young man in Connecticut. The media reported that the shooter used an AR-15 semi-automatic gun assault gun with 100-round magazines.

Facts are the young man had such a weapon, but left it in his car trunk. He used four handguns.

Banning assault weapons would not have stopped this horrible killing.

Just recently, a man who had tried to kill two police officers with an assault weapon was sentenced by a judge to four years.

The mother of the Webster Groves family that shot and killed her children and herself did not have an assault weapon.

Almost every one of these terrible events goes back to troubled folks. Without help, they seek to solve their problems in a way that we cannot understand. Banning assault weapons or any gun control that puts honest, law-abiding citizens in a defensive position is wrong.

Let’s address the “background checks” at gun shows. If the writer had done his research, he would have known that they already do background checks at gun shows.

To solve most of the gun problems, we need judges and law enforcement folks to prosecute gun offenders to the fullest extent of the law. A crime committed with a gun is an automatic five more years in prison.

Anyone with an illegal weapon should be charged with a felony crime.

Let’s start what New York has and that is stop-and-search laws that allow police to stop and search those folks that have weapons.

That’s how you stop this problem — provide help for the mentally ill in lieu of free phones.

William E. Kuhlmann

Concord