Charles Richardson's informative column on Macon and Bibb County crime statistics points out that while aggravated assaults have declined in the city and county, residential burglaries are up 6% over last year. These burglaries are associated with drugs and violence. The reality is that police cannot be everywhere all the time to protect our homes. Roadblocks and visible police presence may deter crime briefly, but unless we turn society into a police state even those measures will not suffice. Citizens must take some responsibility for their own safety.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the mainstream liberal media and the entrenched political medical establishment support draconian gun control measures that would ultimately lead to the confiscation and banning of firearms.

A prominent member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has refuted key details of a study published recently by the Violence Policy Center, in which researchers concluded that women were not safer if they used a handgun for self-defense.

Ken Jones’ “Tunes for Gun Buyback” offer may be noble but there may be more “feel good” and publicity intentions than meets the eye. And Rick Hutto, as a public servant, you should at least know better. This is a “feel good” proposal intended to be more beneficent to the giver (Jones) than the recipients (i.e., gun donors and sundry criminals and street gang members).

For starters, here are three detrimental consequences of this proposal:

Last month the Georgia legislature, House and Senate, passed House Bill 89 and sent it to Governor Sonny Perdue (R) for his signature. This legislation makes significant and much-needed improvements to Georgia's Right to Carry laws.

The Jan. 12 article describing how business owners are demanding action because of the recent string of armed robberies expresses our frustration as Macon residents.

Undercover agents will be placed at businesses, but the reality is that police cannot be everywhere all of the time. Moreover, the courts have ruled they need not protect individuals; they only owe a duty to protect the community at large (Bowers v. DeVito, 1982).

This book recounting true stories of intended victims who defended themselves with firearms is a must read for the millions of Americans who own firearms for self-protection.

In addition to the fascinating human interest stories contained in this book, heroic tales of individual citizens defending themselves with firearms (as well as interesting stories of shop owners, bankers, etc. defending themselves in the workplace), it also has cliffhanging stories of citizens defending themselves and their families against serial killers and sundry vicious predators, stalkers, etc.

I just finished reading Paxton Quigley's Armed and Female. It is a well-written, easy to read book, written by a woman for women about firearm usage, safety, and training. I learned a great deal from this informative book and I would highly recommend it to other women who may be thinking of obtaining a firearm for self and family protection (even for women whose husbands already have firearms in the home but have never handled them), and for women interested in target shooting.

Two gun control organizations have stepped forward to bring different approaches to the gun control debate. Make no mistake about it, both of these groups have an agenda, and that is, circumvent the individual right to gun ownership embodied in the Second Amendment.(1)

Once again, the gun control lobby, headed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) and the nebulous Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and incarnated in Congress in the person of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is using the ghastly acts of madmen or fanatic terrorists, this time a cowardly sniper, to call for further gun control measures to disarm law-abiding Americans.

This time the false panacea is "ballistic fingerprinting," which, purportedly, would have "solved this crime after the first shooting."

Wrong!