Dear Editor:

My letters on our overly permissive gun policies have been aimed at the gun lobby and its rhetoric, not the individual gun owners. As a gun owner myself, it hurts me to read that I am accused of wanting to take guns away from otherwise law abiding citizens. My suggestion that gun ownership should be denied to criminals and crazies has made me a target of derision and scorn.

We have also seen in these pages untruthful statements made without foundation. Lately, the online magazine Slate published an article entitled “Five Myths About Gun Control” that lists numerous scholarly studies that exposes the gun lobby’s rhetoric.

This points to a morally unsettling aspect of the discussion about the liberal proliferation of guns. That a call for a reasonable discussion can be met with falsehoods and lies or a person who might voice an opinion contrary to that of the gun lobby would be pilloried in an attempt to quash further discussion.

Another morally deficient aspect of this debate is the entire lack of empathy that the gun lobby and its apologists seem to have toward the victims of their liberal policies. It seems that rather than come into a discussion of how to prevent further tragedy, the gun lobby would have us ignore this unnecessary and preventable suffering. It is the presumption that the right to own guns is somehow higher than these innocent victims’ right to their lives that I find deeply morally disturbing.

The gun lobby plumbs the depths of moral depravity with its opposition to treaties designed to prevent sales of small arms to terrorist groups and narcotics traffickers and every petty war lord or insurgent group on earth. The guns exported are sold through third parties to anyone with the cash. Too often these guns are used to send our troops home in boxes. The gun lobby is funded in part by these profits.

We can certainly come up with a reasonable solution to the problem of gun violence in this country without infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay