Are guns necessary?
Sir: I sometimes wonder if columns like 'A Spectator's Notebook' February 24) don't go out of the way to write rubbish with the intention of goading half-wittedreaders like me into rising to the bait. If so your item, ' Are guns necessary?' succeeded. I don't think I've ever read such farrago of ill-considered nonsense in my life. Before you try and whip up a campaign against legal weapons which give a great many people a great deal of harmless fun, why don't you point out that all the firearms involved in crimes of violence are illegal? That the criminal must have a firearm is true, simply because years of restrictive laws have made it a status symbol to him, but he never acquires his weapon on permit; just pays a couple of pounds over the odds, and gets what he wants with no trouble or form filling. A demand exists for firearms for criminal use which will not be denied.
It would be instructive to know the proportion of cars used in crimes of violence, the number of sharp instruments (kitchen knives, etc), the number of blunt instruments (golf clubs, etc), the number of illegal firearms used in crimes of violence as against the number of legal firearms. Though this will never be known as Home Office figures make no differentiation or indeed state whether they were used in the commission or prevention of a crime.
G. Mott Greyfriars Garden Restaurant, Greyfriars Avenue, Hereford.
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