In the letter by Mike Pankratz in the Feb. 17 issue of The Beachcomber, he again loses the purpose of the Second Amendment , (“Human lives worth more than Second Amendment rights,” Feb. 17). How many lives do you suppose were lost in support of our Second Amendment and why? I’ll skip over the wars fought defending our Constitution and Republic because I fail to see the connection between military and U.S. civilian deaths, so I’ll just stay on U.S. deaths.

Stats are funny things, when taken out of context, you can manipulate any argument. Mr. Pankratz conveniently leaves out that of the people who were “shot and killed”, over 60% were suicides. He also doesn’t distinguish being “shot and killed” as murders, accidental gun deaths, self defense or deaths caused by persons legally or illegally processing a gun. Accidental gun fatalities occur less than machinery accidents in the U.S. Perhaps we should ban all sales of machinery on Vashon. I also see no mention of the direct correlation between cities and/or states loosening their gun laws and the drop in the crime and murder rates there. Or the fact that 4 of the cities with the strictest gun laws in the nation have the highest murder rate. That being said, since 2014, one of those cities, Detroit, whose Police Chief asked their citizenry to arm themselves, have seen their crime rate steadily decline.

I’d love to know where Mike Pankratz gets his militia “facts” too. Especially about “militia group members, many with passionate grievances that make them hate, and sometimes want to kill other people whom they find intolerable.” His argument that the gun used in the 1700s was a “long, unwieldy pipe that required about a minute of preparation to shoot one bullet” is absurd. We used to use a flint and steel to light a fire too but thank God we’ve developed since then……..and so has the firearm.

— Brian Dougher