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The letter from Daphne Zager in the BDN on March 27 in which she reports on her constant fear of being shot is one of the saddest letters I’ve ever read. It must be terrible to live in fear, especially fear of something that almost certainly won’t happen.
According to federal statistics, guns aren’t among the 10 leading causes of death in Maine. I believe Zager’s letter is symptomatic of the fear that is being inculcated into today’s youth. I can’t help contrasting today with the world I grew up in in the 1940s and 1950s. We rode bicycles without wearing helmets. We played baseball with no helmets. The cars we rode in had no child seats or seat belts. We rode in the back of pickup trucks. We went barefoot outdoors. Some of us went to the town dump to shoot rats.
Amazingly enough Zager wants more gun control. She doesn’t seem to realize that the measures currently being proposed in Maine in response to the Lewiston shootings would have basically no effect on gun violence, but would greatly diminish the Second Amendment freedoms of all of us.
Lawrence E. Merrill
Bangor
