Editor, Smithfield Times:

One of the real travasties occurring in our cities is the tremendous spike in crime (including shootings) since the “Defund the Police” movement started. If Black lives really matter, how can the number shot in a single weekend in a city like Chicago be ignored?

This made me suspicious, and sure enough, I didn’t have long to wait. The attorney general of New York filed suit to dissolve the National Rifle Association. Even with the complicity of the mainstream media there is no way serious target shooters and hunters have anything to do with the problem.

First, we don’t normally live in inner cities. Second, when I look at my .22 caliber target pistol, target rifle, skeet gun and trap gun, I wager that you could search an entire inner city neighborhood and not find any guns like them.

For example a .22 caliber target rifle is a heavy-barreled, single-shot rifle weighing over 15 pounds. It or a similar model since the 52D Winchester is no longer made, cost over $1,000 and has about $400 worth of metallic, not telescopic, sights on it!

I have been involved in hunting, gun collecting, pistol and skeet shooting for over 60 years. No close associate of mine has even been charged with a serious crime. There has only been one suicide, and a serious illness may have been involved there. Even the less affluent among us have gun safes. We obey the law.

If the prospect of Beto O’Rourke confiscating my gun doesn’t bother you, perhaps you should consider this, since these extreme “progressives” seem to think they have the right to control every aspect of our lives. Wait until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes for your car because it is not sufficiently eco-friendly. But don’t worry; she’ll give you $500 for it!

 

Roger Healy Jr.

Smithfield