---

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 27, 1993                   TAG: 9301270320
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

---

DON'T LET NRA DECIDE THE ISSUE

IT HAS BEEN said, and I think it is probably true, that we get no better or worse than what we want in our society or our world. To put it another way, if you see something wrong going on around you and do nothing about it, indirectly you are condoning it.

In a recent series of articles in the Roanoke Times & World-News on guns and gun control, it was stated that a majority of the people surveyed were in favor of some type of gun control, be it a waiting period or limiting the number of guns one can purchase a month. If this is true, then why aren't they speaking up? Why are they allowing the National Rifle Association to have its way again by using half-truths and fear to force our representatives to vote their way? Are you going to allow 80,000 persons in our state to determine what laws we shall or shall not have?

If you want your schools to be turned into armed camps because some students bring guns into the buildings, if you want our state capital to continue to have the fourth-highest murder rate of any city in our nation, or if you want our state to be known as the "gunrunning state" on the East Coast, then just sit back and do nothing. Then perhaps "Virginia Is For Lovers" will be replaced by "Virginia Is For Gunrunners." ASHBY LAZENBY BEDFORD

---