‘Gun Control Gets a Boost’

Your editorial urging a national law requiring a waiting period to purchase handguns is tragically irrelevant.

Only the day before your editorial Sheriff Sherman Block told a state task force on gangs and drugs that 1,400 gang-related murders have taken place in the county in the last five years. My God, 1,400 gang murders and you and President Reagan call for a waiting period to purchase handguns. Ridiculous.

There obviously is only one way to stem the wave of murders, shootings and woundings by gangs and others: Take away the right to buy, sell or own a handgun, and provide stiff prison sentences for anyone breaking the law.

Your editorial recognized the need for such a law but your endorsement of the half-hearted, halfway waiting-period requirement simply takes weak-kneed politicians off the hook once again. Their answer to the bloodshed on our streets is to call for banning “Saturday night specials” and make-work paper-work solutions like waiting periods.

It’s time for our legislators to stop cringing before the NRA and do what they know needs doing--outlaw handguns and automatic weapons.

LU HAAS

Pacific Palisades