Costas on gun control

To the Editor:

I’m sure that by now everyone has seen, or heard, about NBC’s Bob Costas’ bully-pulpit rant about the evils of handguns in our society. Mr. Costas demonstrates, once again, mainstream media’s utter disregard for nonbiased news reporting, as was clearly demonstrated in the most recent elections.

Mr. Costas used the Belcher/Perkins tragedy to verbalize his and NBC’s anti-gun agenda. To say that Belcher and Perkins would still be alive if Belcher did not possess a handgun is an assumption by Mr. Costas and an unsupported fallacy.

I guess they should have taken the knives away from O.J. Simpson and Nicole Simpson would still be alive.

History is full of thousands of monsters who in their rage used many varied objects and methods to kill their victims. Just a few of a long list are knives, ice picks, hammers, pillows, ropes, garotes, poison – the list goes on.

Are we going to take all of these potential weapons away from people who might use them wrongly?

If handguns are banned, what about hunters/sportsmen? Are we going to allow them to keep their shotguns, high powered rifles, bows, crossbows and arrows? All potentially lethal weapons.

And if they take all of these away, who is going to be there to protect my family and me from a home invasion in the middle of the night? The police will be the first to tell you they can’t guarantee that they will be there in time.

No doubt, the deaths of Ms. Perkins and Mr. Belcher are a terrible, senseless tragedy, but are we going to solve the problem by turning our nation into one of a majority of potential victims? The criminals will always find a way to get guns and knives. Is this the nation we want? Not I.

John Klay

Ballwin