Your editorial page included an incorrect, incoherent rant from a Mr. Goodrich (“
He claimed that the AR-15, the fully automatic version of a weapon often used by America’s mass shooters, was “produced originally by Colt starting in 1963,” “has never been a weapon of war” and “has been a popular choice for hunting.”
He is three times wrong. NPR’s article “A Brief History of the AR-15” notes that “ArmaLite first developed the AR-15 in the late 1950s as a military rifle (but failed to sell it) ... In 1959 the company sold the design to Colt. In 1963, the U.S. military selected Colt to manufacture the automatic (AR-15) rifle that soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.”
Game hunters cannot use semi-automatic AR-15s because they are illegal based on their magazine capacity and caliber.
Goodrich writes of his imagined program of “confiscating the rifles” (presumably semi-automatic AR-15s). No, there is no such program. But rather than “confiscating the rifles” to reduce fatalities from mass shootings, Goodrich points to the failed GOP Right to Life Bill as a solution. His twisted mind relates the challenges of adopting children to his desire to control women of reproductive age and then links both of these to our homegrown destruction of American lives by mass shooters.
I ask: Does your publication of this mindless rubbish positively contribute to any aspect of our nation’s discourse?
Thomas D. DahmerDurango
