Wrong about gun-free zones

In his Jan. 3 letter to the editor, Rich Schwanbeck of Elk Grove Village regurgitated the much-ballyhooed claim by gun enthusiasts that gun-free zones help the bad guys.

Referring to the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, he went on to assert that " ... there wouldn't be 14 people dead and 21 people wounded if some of the law abiding people attending the event had guns."

In reality, such an assertion is unsupportable. There is no way of knowing how those law-abiding folks might have reacted or what the outcome might have been if they had. Even with ongoing, intense training, which I doubt most citizen gun owners undertake, how an average citizen will react in the split-second moment of crisis is unpredictable.

In fact, the toll of dead and wounded might possibly have been higher as panicked citizens returned fire with little or no forethought or accuracy. Then, too, there's the problem of confounding the police response when there are even more people running around with weapons at an active shooting scene.

Packing lethal force is an awesome responsibility. I daresay that the shrillness and simplistic claims by the NRA and so many gun proponents is good evidence that the majority of them do not recognize that responsibility.

To be sure, the issue is complex. Both sides of the gun control argument make valid points. As usual, it's the extreme and oversimplified arguments, whether pro or con, that do not add up.

These, particularly as presented by the NRA, are preventing a thoughtful examination of the problem of gun violence and the crafting of laws to deal with it in a meaningful way.

Bob Dohn

Schaumburg