Toting Guns
Editor: Gun control has been viewed as a panacea for the thousands upon thousands of people shot in our land every year.
Gun control or no gun control, the criminals who commit these acts will always be able to find a weapon to use.
I looked in the entertainment section of the March 22 paper to do an informal survey on what that day's movies had to offer. Here's what I found:
"If Looks Could Kill" pictures a young man with a big smile on his face sitting on the hood of a car with an automatic weapon in his lap. "The Hard Way" is advertised with two men both holding pistols.
"The Perfect Weapon" has an actor wielding a billy club and the statement: "No Gun. No Knife. No Equal." "New Jack City" depicts a young man holding a .45 caliber revolver.
How can we as a society think that gun control is a serious response to our problems with gun-related violence?
The problem is not only with the guns that shoot the bullets but perhaps even more with what we ourselves condone and approve of in our own entertainment.
As long as we, as a people, accept violence as a form of entertainment we should not complain that people are being maimed and killed on our streets by the very type of acting out that we are permitting in our movie theaters and on television.
Brice G. Dowell.
Towson.
Council Districts
Editor: I was overcome with joy and adulation -- as well as sadness and disheartenment -- at the City Council Judiciary Committee meeting, where the public was given an opportunity to testify on the merits of a bill to redraw councilmanic districts for the next decade.
I applaud and congratulate the 12 brave, bold and fair-minded black and white elected officials who worked hard in hammering out a bill that will give much-needed and deserved increased representation to the majority population in Baltimore City.
The name of the game in the City Council since its inception has been 10 votes, a simple majority. The supporters of C.C. 1233 did their homework well and had 10 votes.
These council members were subjected to a vitriolic and thinly veiled racist attack on their motives and intentions by dissatisfied colleagues and residents of some of the areas slated to be moved. Their biggest fear was that they may be represented in City Council by African-Americans.
If I did not know where I was, I would have thought that the hearing was being held in the Confederacy of the 1860s, South Africa or Nazi Germany.
Threats of secession from the city, wholesale abandonment of ++ homes and property, pervaded the entire session. It was truly disgusting.
I know in my heart of hearts that those speakers against the bill don't represent the majority of those fine citizens who will be affected by the change.
African-American elected officials in this city, past and present, have distinguished themselves on being fair in representing all people who live in their districts.
It is an affront to think that "intelligent" white people in Baltimore in 1991 have this paralyzing fear being of represented by blacks.
On balance, the African-American council members, past and present, have the educational background, professional credentials and community respect that equals, and in most cases exceeds, their colleagues.
Our white council members have always said that they represent "everyone."
Now some of the "everyone" will represent them.
Nathaniel McFadden.
Baltimore.
PD The writer is a former city councilman from the Second District.
Gerrymander
Editor: If citizens do not want to trouble their conscience with judging the ethics of gerrymandering, which rigs voting results as effectively as stuffing ballot boxes, then perhaps they will consider the legality of it all.
Article III, section 7 (a) of our Baltimore City Charter reads: "The criteria in redistricting shall be equality of population, contiguous territory, compactness, natural boundaries, existing councilmanic district lines and the standards established by the Supreme Court of the United States."
Compare the original map with the infamous Stokes plan. Can any honest person consider the silly, sphinx-shaped First, the meat-cleavered and shamelessly distorted Third, and the further elongated and boomerang-like Fifth as respectful of compactness and existing councilmanic district lines?
Surely a good attorney will relish arguing a case to uphold true-blue legality and, incidentally, common decency.
$ Vaughn Paul Deckret.
Baltimore.
No Woman's Land
Editor: The subject of women in combat keeps surfacing, and as a World War II combat vet I say women don't deserve to go through the mental and physical ordeal.
The latest effort to advance the cause of women in combat took place recently at a "packed house" at Anne Arundel Community College by a would-be advocate, Prof. Rita Gomez.
Those who advocate a role for women in front-line combat are unable to clearly define combat and the standard to measure up to.
Ms. Gomez, for example, was quoted as saying, "The dumbest man you can get could still dig a ditch." That remark may have wowed a packed house but it isn't funny. We dug as dumb men. We dug many times. We dug when trapped and pinned down for seven days. We dug when pounded for four hours by our own artillery during a German counterattack.
Women in combat? Why? What is combat? Being in a war zone isn't being in combat. Contrary to present belief, we didn't have 500,000 fighting men and women in combat destroying the Iraqi. The actual fighting was done by only 10,000 men, testimony to the power of the Air Force.
What is the combat area? Normally just that area from the battalion command post to the enemy -- no man's land. Aptly named. What about the standard to be measured up to by soldiers? Something called the "Congressional Medal of Honor."
Read the citations. No woman can measure up.
It is gross misrepresentation and gross irresponsibility to advocate a front-line combat role for women. Newspapers and school officials ought to take a role in discouraging such irresponsibility.
C. W. Edwards.
Annapolis.
Hate Crimes against Gays
Editor: One cannot help but be struck by the coincidence of two articles regarding gay-bashing ('Gay basher may have given self AIDS" and "House rejects 'hate crimes' measure") which appeared in The Sun March 22.
Both clearly demonstrate what gay men and lesbians often face in the way of bias: violence, ignorance and darkness. On the one hand we have gay-bashing represented by a 49-year-old heterosexual man reported in Lancet ('He told me he did this too many times to remember") who may have, ironically, contracted HIV infection through his behavior.
Granted, this case may be horrifying in its extreme. But similar, just as awful events are a common fact of life for many gay men and lesbians in Maryland and throughout the United States.
We also have uninformed attitudes and behavior represented by Delegates John Arnick, R. Clayton Mitchell and D. Bruce Poole.
While not intending to be malicious, these men and others continue to hide behind fear and confusion surrounding the meaning of sexual orientation in order to justify doing nothing. Happily we have legislators like Delegates Gene Counihan, Anne Perkins and Samuel Rosenberg, who lead by shedding more light on the subject.
The local gay and lesbian community is greatly concerned about gay-bashing.
Since June 1989, the Baltimore Justice Campaign, in cooperation with the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, has taken reports from individuals of more than 70 incidents of anti-gay harassment, violence and discrimination which had occurred in the metropolitan Baltimore area -- about three incidents per month.
In many cases when individuals report incidents to us, we work to link them up with local law enforcement agencies.
This is to help get their cases investigated and, in some cases, resolved. We also educate our community about self-protection and conduct on-going dialogues with local police to build greater trust and awareness of anti-gay hate crimes issues. This is all done solely with volunteers.
One of the problems we constantly have is that we have to rely totally on self-reports and, therefore, don't have consistent and solid numbers to go on.
Like the context of many gay-bashing incidents, we are having to fight the problem in the dark. We could go a lot further if we had the professional resources of law enforcement to collect, investigate and analyze data. That way, we can work together to develop more effective responses.
John Hannay. Baltimore.
The writer co-chairs of the Baltimore Justice Campaign.