To the editor:

I am deeply upset about the passing of the concealed weapons law. There simply is no reason why someone in the year 2006 would need to walk down Massachusetts Street with a gun. It is an individual’s choice to own a weapon for home protection, but it is a public safety issue to take a weapon out on the street. I am sick of hearing about the rights of gun owners. What about the rights of people who do not want to be around guns?

I should be able to walk downtown with my family and not worry about who has a gun, if one might accidentally discharge or if some vigilante shootout is going to occur.

People are obsessed with their individual rights and the potential of them being taken away. Individual responsibility must accompany individual freedom. Unfortunately, it is often the people who are most vocal about their rights who lack the personal responsibility to carry a firearm. Is it your right to carry a gun in public now? Yes. Is it necessary? Is it responsible? Is it best for this community as a whole?

I sympathize with people who want to feel safer. But regardless of licensing and firearms classes, more guns on the street do not make a safer society. I am troubled by the regression of social consciousness and responsibility this law represents. It is a shame Kansas has gone in this direction.

Ben Andrews,

Lawrence