The Pioneer’s August 9 editorial on “gun control” (“US Lawmakers Must Reexamine, Alter Gun Control Laws”), is off-base, mainly because it lacks perspective. The number of people killed in random shootings is nothing compared to the death toll of tens of millions of unarmed innocents slaughtered by “their own” governments. Sikhs in America – who do indeed suffer from the ignorance of those who see their beards and turbans and mistake them for Wahabi-indoctrinated Islamic fundamentalists – would do better to arm themselves, in keeping with the historical tradition of their faith, which encourages Sikhs to break bad laws, including laws against bearing arms (see http://www.reonline.org.uk/ks3/topiclist.php?9-330 ) than to simply “live in fear.”

Your editorial claims there is “no valid reason for civilians to own semiautomatic handguns, assault rifles or high-capacity magazines.” Implicit in that statement is that there *is* a valid reason for *government employees* to own, or at least legally carry, these items. Going further, the idea implicit in The Pioneer editorial’s perspective is that governments should exercise power over the people, not the other way around. For as Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, one of the most prolific mass murderers in history noted (and who better to know?), “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

If you want to argue for tyranny, please do so openly. If that is not your intention, then let’s first talk about how to get high-powered weapons out of the hands of governments, which have historically abused them the most (do a web search for the term “democide”). After the rulers are safely disarmed, then we can have a conversation about the kind of “gun control” you seem to have in mind (further disarming ordinary people).