I read with bemused interest the editorial entitled “Reasonable Gun Control Held Up By Gun Lobby,” which was written by your “Editorial Editor,” Will Thompson.

Reading that editorial brought me back to 1993 when I was the Production Editor of the Hastings Law News. Despite the insane rigors and demands of law school, we managed to get an issue out every month (or so).

What saved us from total and utter insanity were the editorials. We thought they were truly funny. Actually, it wasn’t even “our” editorials that were amusing – rather, it was the “letters to the editor.”

In that tradition, I trust that this letter won’t disappoint.

Back to the topic at hand. . .

I could simply refute Mr. Thompson’s assertions line by line. As a lawyer, I do this all day, and it’s easy – especially when the facts are on my side, like they are now.

But I’m not going to do that, since it will bore you, and more importantly, it will bore me too.

Rather, I am going to tell you a story. It’s a true one, so I hope you will read it and perhaps read between the lines and understand what I am really telling you.

In 2005 my wife and I had a baby. That was also the same year that Hurricane Katrina destroyed a huge portion of an entire state. As a new father, I became very (perhaps, overly) protective of my new daughter, and my wife. I worried so much about things happening to my family that I even made an “earthquake kit” with medicine, water, food, etc.

I thought that was enough.

But I kept seeing images on television of houses being looted, stores being looted, and other nasty stuff like that.

So after much thinking, I bought a shotgun. My reasoning was that if things got totally crazy in East Oakland, I could at least protect my family.

The story has a happy ending, actually.

No earthquake ever happened at our house. No riots happened. Nobody tried to “home-invade” us. After a while, I started to feel like maybe I overreacted to Hurricane Katrina, and that the world was not going to end (like I thought it was.)

But I still had that stupid shotgun. I’d only shot it a few times, and I actually didn’t like it much. To me, it was too loud, and kind of scary. But then I remembered an old World War II rifle that I also had. It had been sitting disassembled in a closet for years, was gathering dust, and even still had the grease on it from the War. Out of sheer boredom (and some curiosity), I took it to the shooting range one day – and amazingly had a lot of fun shooting it. Against my own desires, I was hooked.

Fast forward to six years later.

It is now 2011. I now own multiple firearms. All of them are legal, stored safely, and only used in a lawful manner. I am a Board Member of a prominent gun rights organization. I’ve shot thousands of rounds of ammunition, and have met literally hundreds of other people who also own and like guns.

Six years ago, I was “outside” of the gun rights movement. Now I am “inside” the gun rights movement.

Let me describe to you how it looks from the inside. . .

First off, gun rights groups are not “funded by corporations.” The vast majority of funding comes from people like me, who send in a little money now and then to help the cause. The reason that some gun rights groups have a substantial amount of money is simply because there are a lot of “real people” out there who support their missions.

We’ve actually done some scholarly research on the issue of guns vs. crime. Based on the research, we’ve determined that areas with more legal guns actually have less crime. I know this sounds totally crazy, but it’s all contained (in excruciating detail) in a book entitled “More Guns, Less Crime.” The book was written by an economics professor, so I’m pretty sure he knows how to crunch the numbers properly.

Gun laws generally do not decrease crime. The famous federal “Assault Weapon Ban” that started in 1994 and ended in 2004 actually did not decrease crime. In fact, violent crime generally went down after the law expired. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you might believe the FBI? Just Google “uniform crime reporting.”

Law abiding gun owners are not “rednecks.” I’m a middle of the road person, politically. I support Gay Rights and a Woman’s Right to Choose. I have gun-owning friends who are female, gay, black, Asian, Hispanic, Indian. Drive over to the Chabot Gun Club some time. It is only a few miles from your campus, so it should be an easy trip. You might be surprised that most of the shooters there are “of color” (or whatever the “correct” term is these days).

But I’m going to stop with the statistics. Basically, the bottom line is that everything you think you know about gun control is wrong.

What I’m going to ask you to do now is to start thinking critically:

Stop listening to the sound bites.

Stop tolerating empty phrases like “common sense gun control,” and “it’s for the children.”

Those things really mean nothing.

Rather, use your own native intelligence and look beyond the media hype.

Do some digging. Check out the FBI “Uniform Crime Reports” if you want to see that crime has decreased. Read “More Guns, Less Crime” to understand why.

Talk to someone who is a gun owner and ask them to take you shooting with them.

Pull up the 501(c)(3) report for the “Brady Campaign” and look at their donors (they are mostly large corporations).

Now do the same thing for the various “gun rights” groups (you will see that our donors are mostly “actual” people).

When you start digging into the real facts, you will start to see a different picture entirely.

It took me six years to fully see this picture, but surely you are smarter than me, and surely it won’t take you as long to see the truth?