Originally published on this website July 26, 2000

I gave the following letter to the Concord City Clerk's office today. It will be included in the printed agenda for the next City Council meeting, in early August. ~~ Sam Cohen

July 25, 2000

Concord City Council and Mayor
41 Green Street
Concord, NH 03301

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I understand that a ten-year-old boy has submitted a petition to the city requesting that gun shows be banned from Everett Arena.

In response, I submit that unthinking and misinformed ten-year-old boys are a nuisance, and should themselves be banned. After all, this young fellow has apparently been taught that the proper role of government is to ban things that he doesn't like; I simply ask for the same privilege. I'm sure I could scare up an equal number of signatures on my petition, and of course, they'd be those of registered voters. Incidentally, please include in the ban all adults who think like those ten-year-olds.

Please also have this boy's parents prosecuted for child endangerment. Surely the City Council has read the recent U.S. Department of Justice report that shows how children whose parents introduced them to guns almost never get involved in violent crime, as compared to those whose parents didn't, and this kid's parents must be in the latter camp. Meanwhile, please inform the police department that if they ever get a 911 call from this family because a predator has invaded their home and is holding a knife to the boy's throat, to be sure to send the kind of police officers who don't have guns, because this family obviously believes that guns don't solve anything.

Of course, if the boy and his family prefer not to know that privately-owned guns are used between four and 70 times more often to prevent crime than to perpetrate it, or if they choose to believe that children are more in danger from guns than ever before (the reverse is true), then maybe they should move to a different country. How about a nice, safe place like England? Whoops, that won't work: after the British government essentially banned guns a few years ago, their violent crime rates have grown higher than ours, and now "hot" burglaries - in which the residents are attacked - are more popular than surreptitious ones, since the criminals no longer have to worry about getting shot. Or how about Israel? Uh oh, they wouldn't like that either: after Israel had lost a lot of children to terrorist attacks, it armed its teachers and other adults at schools - instantly bringing those attacks down to exactly zero, but of course now there are those nasty, icky guns everywhere. No, I suppose this family would prefer a place where the government has all the guns and lots and lots of police - places like Germany under Hitler or Russia under Stalin.

If they do choose to stay here, educate them about this country's founding principles of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and distrust of government power - or if those concepts are too hard for them to understand, just remind them of the state motto, which some of us take seriously: Live Free or Die.

Sincerely,

Sam Cohen
(registered to vote in Ward 5 of the city of Concord)

cc:
Editor, Concord Monitor
Al Rubega, Esq., Director and Senior Policy Advisor, Gun Owners of New Hampshire
Angel Shamaya, Executive Director, KeepAndBearArms.com