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

DATE: FRIDAY, January 29, 1993                   TAG: 9301290433
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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GUN CONTROL A 25-YEAR-OLD FAILURE

I WAS going to draft a lengthy letter discussing your anti-gun, anti-National Rifle Association articles published Jan. 9 in the Roanoke Times & World-News. It reminded me of your "Kids and Guns" tirade at this same time last year. Since your position is so well-known concerning guns and the Second Amendment, I won't waste the space.

I thought I would give a little history lesson, with a quote from Ramsey Clark, then U.S. attorney general, during the 1967 Senate Judiciary hearings on gun control. The law enacted from those hearings became the infamous Gun Control Act of 1968.

"There is no quick and easy way to control crime in America . . . but of all the techniques of law enforcement, its methods of investigation, the procedures of courts, none offers such clear, quick and substantial enhancement to public safety as gun control. Here is a law that implemented can reduce crime, can aid law enforcement."

With the most recent 25 years of history supporting the contrary, have our legislators who support gun control learned nothing? Apparently not, because every year they introduce more gun-control legislation from the anti-gun crowd. It is evident the gun-control crowd either ignores and refuses to accept the data and facts of the past 25 years of failed gun-control legislation, or their true intent is to abolish gun ownership by continuing to chip away at the Second Amendment with the onslaught of new anti-gun legislation every year. I tend to believe the latter.

It is true that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them, including the governor. JOHN LESTER SALEM

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