Veteran city dwellers not ready to panic
I am a veteran Charles Villager, having lived here for 24 years. My husband and I are raising three children here. We feel safe. We move about the neighborhood freely, both day and night.
But I almost choked on my coffee Monday morning reading the front-page article that described the fear gripping my neighborhood ("Unnerved by the violence," July 2).
To claim that these recent tragic events represent a trend is inaccurate and encourages uninformed, panicked overreaction. These events are heinous, but they are not a trend.
As a social scientist, I know that a few data points do not a trend make.
I ache for the victims of the recent events. I, too, have been a crime victim. But I am not victimized. There is a big difference.
My friends, neighbors and family are not unnerved. We are concerned and committed to keeping our neighborhood safe and strong.
We work to respond appropriately to such events and to prevent their reoccurrence. (though what one can do to prevent an incident of road rage from occurring in one's neighborhood eludes me).
If you are afraid, please leave. You will probably be afraid wherever you go.
The rest of us, who are not afraid, will remain outraged by these events, and will do everything possible to care for our neighbors and our neighborhood as we raise our families as vibrant city dwellers.
Deborah Kohl
Baltimore
The writer is a professor of psychology at the University of Baltimore.
City neighborhood continues to thrive
You've got to be kidding: The Sun lets a reporter recite a few anecdotes and weave them into a supposed trend ("Unnerved by the violence," July 2)?
Where are the police statistics proving this "trend"?
How are the crimes noted in this article any different from those that occur in the counties?
I've lived in Charles Village for 22 years (and yes, I was mugged once, 20 years ago). It's a city neighborhood - an American city neighborhood, which means crime occasionally occurs.
But there's no more crime here now than there has been in those past years.
I'm not afraid to walk out my door. I'm thrilled to support the restaurants, shops, grocery stores and services that make this neighborhood such a fun, thriving, walkable community.
This article was nice sensationalism from The Sun, but lousy reporting.
Lisa Simeone
Baltimore
Fixation on crime may add to exodus
What a way to start a beautiful Sunday morning - by reading The Sun's headline "Losing the streets" (July 1).
The Sun then announces that it will be doing such articles the rest of the year.
But such reporting is not helping us deal with the crime problem in Baltimore.
All The Sun is doing is scaring the responsible citizens of the city and helping to drive more people from the city.
June E. Biller
Baltimore
More guns can curb city's crime crisis
Baltimore's crime victims are the victims of murderous gun control policies ("Losing the Streets," July 1).
Baltimore's leaders believe the city has too many illegal guns. But the real problem is that there are not enough law-abiding citizens with guns.
And the city's leaders somehow cling to the stupid idea that removing guns from more citizens will solve Baltimore's terrible crime problem.
Decades ago, H. L. Mencken correctly predicted that such restrictive gun control's "single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men."
And so Baltimore suffers today at the hands of the violent criminals, a situation made more dangerous by the unintended consequences of Maryland's gun control laws.
It will take many years to correct the violent crime situation that Maryland's gun control laws have help create.
But passing a law that would allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons legally is much-needed and long-overdue.
Charles Guggenheimer
Windsor, Pa.
Pocketbook pain prompts bad mood
I don't understand why Steve Chapman (and many others) don't understand why people have negative feelings about the economy ("Our bad mood doesn't match our good times," Opinion
Commentary, July 2).
When people think about the economy, they aren't looking at macroeconomic indicators; they're looking at their pocketbooks.
And for the vast majority of people, wages are stagnant (how many times must we read that record profits are translating into new jobs and higher wages much more slowly than in the past?) and many of the costs that most affect middle- and working-class people - for gas, electricity, food, college, insurance, etc. - are rising.
If only 23 percent of people think the economy is doing well, I suspect that is because the economy is doing well for about 23 percent of the people.
The growing gap between those who have way too much and the have-nots is a national disgrace, and until we begin to institute sensible policies to correct it, people will be right to think that the economy is not performing as it should.
Marian Marbury
Baltimore
Iraq's sectarian split prevents progress
As a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, I question the idea of progress in Iraq ("Five U.S. soldiers killed in explosion," June 30).
With much of Baghdad still outside our control despite the recent troop surge, the larger picture in Iraq remains bleak.
The continuing rivalry among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds belies the idea that Iraq has any central government that can pacify and unite that fractured nation.
As in the case of our intervention in Somalia, we are learning too late in Iraq that it is easier to take control of a state militarily than to hold or rebuild it.
Joe Hammell
Waynesboro, Pa.
Embryo is a stage in the cycle of life
I vehemently disagree with the writer of the letter "Equating embryos, living kids is wrong" (June 28).
When he states that embryos are not mourned when they die, clearly he is only speaking for himself.
When I suffered two miscarriages, the only word that I can use to describe my condition afterward is mourning.
That is because, no matter their stage of development, those two children were alive, and they died.
Many other women whom I've spoken to have experienced such a feeling of loss in similar situations.
It is interesting that the writer argues that embryos are not living children and they are not mourned when they die.
But how could something that is not alive experience death?
"Embryonic" does not mean non-living. It is a term used to describe a stage of an animal's - in this case, a human being's - development.
Laura Campbell
Fallston