You can have a billion gun laws, but if they don't address show sales or trigger locks, they still won't stop a single gun-show sale or prevent one of hundreds of children shooting themselves or a friend every year. That is why people like me want to see laws requiring trigger locks and preventing gun show sales, so that a few lives may be saved. The conservatives' argument -- that some people who go to a lot of trouble may still get around these safety measures -- ignores the hundreds of lives that will be saved in the overwhelming majority of cases where the children do not try to get around the law.

As for Horowitz's assertion that Charlton Heston is a new deal liberal, he should reconsider the difference between ancient political history and current fact: Heston is not known for his efforts supporting any liberal causes and has not been during my lifetime. He is known for being in the "Planet of the Apes" movies, for playing Moses half a century ago, for having been president of the Screen Actors Guild in reaction to a liberal administration and for being a defender of Elia Kazan and president of the NRA.

-- Daniel P. White
Walnut Creek, Calif.

Horowitz hit the bull's-eye. Against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the anti-rights forces are doing their best to fix the blame for the aberrant behavior of a few evil people on the millions of responsible, law-abiding gun owners in this country.

Very few of us are against common-sense regulations that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals and unstable persons who misuse them. Few of us are against common-sense measures to insure the safe use of firearms; most of us have grown up in homes in which those measures were carefully drilled into us as part of the responsibility of gun ownership. If our justice system would simply enforce the laws already in place, we'd see criminal misuse of firearms dwindle to record low levels.

Actually and unfortunately, not all the blame for intolerance lies with the left. Their attack on the Second Amendment is only a single sortie in the campaign by both the left and the right to destroy the Bill of Rights. The creeping forces of political correctness and censorship fuel the specific attacks from radicals on both sides -- the proposed flag anti-desecration amendment, the unconstitutional "Ten Commandments" bill, and the useless and deceptive gun restrictions now before the House and Senate.

-- Thomas W. Knowles
College Station, Texas

While I will admit that liberal rhetoric can get out of hand at times, I must object to the idea that conservatives are blameless on this score. Horowitz claims such obvious targets as Barney Frank have not been touched. Maybe Horowitz was on vacation when Dick Armey called him "Barney Fag"; maybe he was out of the country when Robert Dornan refused to use the house gym after Frank came out of the closet. Maybe Horowitz was asleep when Trent Lott compared gays to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs. Maybe he was still napping when Lott spoke before a group of racists and said they had the right values for America.

There is plenty of bigotry and name-calling on the Republican side of the aisle.

-- David S. Conroy
Lakewood, Ohio

DAVID HOROWITZ RESPONDS ...

Forty-four children a year under the age of 10 are killed in gun accidents. Twice that number die in bathtub drownings. What liberals don't seem to understand is that targeting guns is a meaningless "fix." Why not ban automobiles because they kill so many people?

As for Heston's liberalism, supporting Elia Kazan is a liberal act, as is being president of an association of 3 million mainly working- and middle-class Americans who support the Second Amendment. You have confused being a leftist with being a liberal.

And as for the "Barney Fag" incident: I never said conservatives don't occasionally call people names. The point was that conservatives' attitude toward liberals were that they were misguided (and therefore reformable); liberals' attitudes toward conservatives is that they are evil. It's a big difference.

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