Jody Langford’s rant (“Mob rule is taking over,” April 5) alleges (twice!) that the current student protests seeking better firearms regulation are adult-led, not to mention “stupid,” “ridiculous,” and part of “a socialist, anti-gun agenda” that is hyperbolic, hysterical, and “completely devoid of any factual basis.”
Talk about fact-free hyperbole!
Langford assumes that only anti-gun folks support the student protests. I am a current gun owner, a former Marine Corps firearms instructor and police officer, and I support the students. For starters, no civilian needs a fully automatic weapon or a 30-round magazine.
Langford’s implication that teenagers are too dumb and apathetic to have valid opinions of their own (even on a life-and-death issue such as this!) echoes the old racist slur that blacks protesting Jim Crow were being led by Communist agitators, and thus had no legitimate complaints.
To compare the relative maturity of Langford versus the kids he disparages, please compare his letter with an opinion piece in the same New Times issue by a junior at Morro Bay High School (“Why ‘America first’ is for losers”).
Dave Raleigh
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Apr 12-22, 2018.
Langford expressed outrage against “mob rule” but only because the anti-NRA protesters he hates so much comprise the wrong kind of mob,I’m sure he’s fine with the sort of mob like we saw last year in Charlottesville VA where a mob of neo-Nazis carrying tiki torches marched through the streets & where one of their number shouting “white shariah!” rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman.