This concerns the article in The Post-Journal on May 4, 2024.

The gentleman proceeds to unjustly excoriate The Post-Journal for the editorial “New York Gun Laws Are Indeed Effective.” What The Post-Journal printed was “New York’s doing a good job of keeping guns out of the wrong hands, isn’t it?” The Post-Journal was making a facetious statement, for lack of a better term, after printing examples of many drugs and weapon charges in the city. The fact of the matter is gun laws do not work and they will continue not to work no matter how many laws you have on the books.

Gun laws are a placebo for those who cry the loudest. Often what is neglected to report or say is the number of times armed citizens have thwarted an attack just by brandishing their weapon and not using it. Whether it is by design or pure ignorance that is often not mentioned.

Professor John R. Lott, Jr. is a senior research scholar in the School of Law at Yale University. He was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989 and has published over eighty articles in academic journals. He is neither pro gun or anti gun. Might I suggest that those who want the truth purchase his book “More Guns Less Crime” and read all 309 pages of it. And while you are at it read the United State Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.

“We the people” are tired of the diarrhea and propaganda regarding our right to bear firearms. Ignorance is not bliss. It is detrimental to everything our forefathers warned us about. What is so difficult to understand “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Today more than ever there is a need to protect yourself and your family. Especially when our borders are open to the worst of the worst individuals, rapists, murderers and mental patients ever to enter our country.

Not too long ago I approached our state representative if knew of anyone who was murdered with a registered firearm. He could not give me an example so he asked his New York State colleagues. No one could come up with one example. So, who poses a greater threat to our society. Is it the armed citizen or the gun grabbers?

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms–disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes–such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants–they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man my be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man”. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States.

Bruce Piatz is a Jamestown resident.