THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407080028
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Calls for gun prohibition are misguided. The Prohibition Amendment was passed early in this century. It created the greatest smuggling ring in our country, bringing in whiskey through Canada and Europe.
My father was captain of an oceangoing tugboat hauling barges up and down our coast. He told me he was approached numerous times to meet foreign ships outside of our three-mile limit to bring in unlawful whiskey, but he passed it up. The smugglers used airplanes and machine guns to fight off our Coast Guard.
Finally the amendment was repealed and the smuggling was stopped.
If an amendment were to be passed prohibiting ownership of firearms, we would see mass smuggling of guns by criminals.
During the Los Angeles riots, those store owners who had firearms on hand were not looted.
A Cuban refugee who escaped to Florida told of Castro securing the lists of registered firearms and sending his army out to collect all the privately owned guns. All those who resisted were shot, and their homes were burned down!
It was divulged after World War II ended that the Japanese high command started planning an invasion of California after Pearl Harbor, but when the Japanese spies here in the United States advised them that tens of millions of Americans owned firearms, the idea of an invasion was given up.
Communists have prohibited private gun ownership, and we all know the restricted life they live!
We don't advocate confiscating all autos and trucks because a few thousand Americans drive drunk.
Almost everyone knows that if a gun is laid down on a table along with the supper dishes, and if no one touches the gun, it will stay there forever without causing any harm.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects all law-abiding citizens who own any kind of firearm, to keep such guns for target practice and defense if necessary.
JAMES W. HARRISON JR.
Norfolk, June 27, 1994 by CNB