The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

Elsewhere on this page is a letter to the editor from a Rosburg man, Jim Perry, who is upset by the recent reports in The Eagle of gun crime across the state.

Mr. Perry objects to "gun control." He assumes I have an anti-gun agenda.

My agenda is to learn more about the whole issue. In the past year, gun related crimes have rocked the nation and spurred debate on the national and state levels about what can be done to prevent such crimes in the future. I'm not sure anyone has the right idea of how to prevent the crimes. In this case, I thought it would be educational to see what crimes are committed, how often, and in what circumstances.

It may be interesting to look at Australia and see what happened there after mass shootings. The government there enacted laws, through a democratic process, that limited access to semi-automatic weapons and embarked on a campaign to buy back firearms. John Howard, prime minister from 1996 to 2007, was a member Australia's conservative party and a friend of US President George H. W. Bush. He drew an audible gasp when, as guest speaker at a Bush function in Texas, he said he was proud of those laws.

"I had been given a sharp reminder that, despite the many things we have in common with our American friends, there is a huge cultural divide when it comes to the free availability of firearms," he wrote in an article published August 1, 2012, in the Melbourne newspaper, The Age (www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/brothers-in-arms-yes-but-the-us-needs-to-get-rid-of-its-guns-20120731-23ct7.html#ixzz2bmZVXD7E).

""So deeply embedded is the gun culture of the US, that millions of law-abiding, Americans truly believe that it is safer to own a gun, based on the chilling logic that because there are so many guns in circulation, one's own weapon is needed for self-protection. To put it another way, the situation is so far gone there can be no turning back."

I have to agree with Mr. Howard's assessment: The gun culture in the United States will make passage of any gun control measures next to impossible. To me, some sort of licensing would make sense, something similar to vehicle licenses and endorsements for large or specialized rigs. However, driving is a privilege, while bearing arms is a right, and thus our nation's gun culture.

Still, it doesn't hurt to see what's going on, does it? Let's watch for another month, and then move on.