A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:

Hello again, Kelly,
I don't want to engage in another gun controversy because the Liberal Left, as it does in most all other life-and-death issues, refuses to acknowledge facts. It prefers to engage in political drama, based upon Progressive myths, as in "an unborn fetus is not a real human being", or "guns are evil, and confiscating firearms will stop violent crime." No introduction to basic logic will help to clarify their thinking, nor will common sense or historical human experience. Most Progressives are allergic to facts.

Your comments on school shootings exemplify my descriptions of this kind of thinking... "...no mention is made of any obligations of the adults of [Uvalde] TX to secure [school children against firearms terror] because they are committed to universal ownership of military-grade weaponry." Your interpretation of that outrageous slaughter is (again typically) wrong and illogical. No one wants "universal ownership of military weaponry."

Most of the city police department shamed itself that day at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022. Nineteen children and two adults were killed in that shooting; 17 others were injured but survived.

"Ramos (the shooter) remained in the school for more than an hour before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) fatally shot him after bypassing numerous local and state officers who had been in the school's hallways for over an hour.” Remembering those reports makes me nauseous today. I'm almost equally upset with the usual Progressive analysis, which is to ban guns. We are as likely to effectively ban firearms from this nation as we are likely to ban sin itself.

The children in Robb Elementary School were left unprotected that fatal day. A door was unlocked, no employee was armed or trained to stop such an attack. State and city police officers were not prepared for a tactical emergency. But the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) knew what to do and did it! Had the school doors been locked, and an armed employee been on guard, this slaughter could have been avoided. Where other schools and public gathering places ignore these basic requirements it's not unreasonable to expect similar future catastrophes. It's accurate to say, except for BORTAC, uncommon cowardice was a common vice that day in Uvalde.

"How often are firearms used defensively in the United States? According to the most-recent study, about 1.6 million times annually. Over a lifetime, about a third of gun owners will use a firearm defensively at least once. This recent data is broadly consistent with decades of social-science research." Also: "In 1993, Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck conducted a survey that was much more methodologically sophisticated than all the above polls. Kleck and his coauthor Marc Gertz found a midpoint estimate of 2.5 million DGUs [Defensive Gun Use] annually, with a possible range of 2 to 3 million."

It's hard to understand why you mock efforts to facilitate a weapons-based defense against school shootings, Kelly. These incidents happen very quickly. Schools can either provide an on-site skilled and armed defender or wait for the cavalry to arrive - and they will, but too often too late. God bless the sworn deputies who respond professionally, but schools need on-site protection as well.

My life-long firearms philosophy is simple, "Gun control means using both hands." Without guns America could not have been created. Without guns America cannot survive. That's a fact.

Well, there I go again, wasting an entire column on a hopeless quest to educate Progressives. I really wanted to talk about our faltering military, our corrupt intelligence services, the rise of "Woke" culture, and our traitorous Commander in Chief. Maybe next week?