THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996                  TAG: 9603070020
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   47 lines

GOOD PEOPLE ALSO KILL

So, the blood bath has begun.

Not a blood bath of drug lords and underlings shooting it out in urban fast-food parking lots.

Not another drive-by shooting with adolescent males hanging out of car windows emptying their 30-round ammo clips into neighboring playgrounds. No. A blood bath of another sort. And it began in that part of the state most prone to argue for its ``constitutional right'' to bear arms wherever and however one pleases.

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Feb. 28), a 60-year-old Christiansburg man ``who recently got a concealed-weapon permit'' was found dead, Feb. 23, in the bedroom of his estranged wife, with a self-inflicted gun wound to his head. His wife's body, with four bullet wounds, was found in the same room. The body of her friend, Donald Anderson, also with four bullet wounds, was found in the garage.

``Only the good people bother to seek concealed-weapon permits,'' argued the proponents of Sen. Virgil Goode's 1995 legislation. ``We need concealed weapons to protect ourselves from all the criminals out there,'' they proclaimed. They argue so without regard for the facts. And they do so at their peril.

Good people lose their tempers. Good people grow frustrated. Good people experience despair. And in their despair, good people act irrationally and absurdly and violently - with whatever weapon is at hand.

The General Assembly of Virginia, as of July 1, 1996, through enactment of its new concealed-weapon carrying law, chose to make readily available to those frantic, despairing hands the one weapon designed for the sole purpose of killing another human being - a weapon so deadly and so easy to use that a 3-year-old has killed with it: the handgun.

Until your representatives and mine rectify this deadly error, until we as their constituents demand that they do so, they will continue to cower before the gun lobby, and the blood of ``good people'' will continue to flow!

PATTY MASTERSON

Vice president

Virginians Against Handgun Violence

Virginia Beach, Feb. 29, 1996 by CNB