James E. Keenan has the letter of the day in the Washington Post:

Shooting Down Doomsayers
Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A15

On reading your May 1 editorial “The Shoot-First State,” I am struck with a sense of deja vu. It seems to me that The Post ran the same “Wild West” editorial when Virginia decided to allow its citizens to carry guns legally.

We now see the same tired predictions of shootouts and streets cluttered with dead bodies in the Sunshine State. It didn’t happen in Virginia, and it won’t happen in Florida.

Any use of deadly force in claimed self-defense, anywhere in the United States, will certainly be investigated, and that level of force must be shown to have been justified. A killing, wounding or even display of a weapon in response to a lesser threat can and will be treated as a crime.

The Post has reported that Sarah Brady deplores the Florida law, lamenting that people might be able to respond to deadly force with deadly force rather than running away.

Reasonable people might wonder how a woman or elderly or disabled person would be able to “just run away” if threatened with death or grievous bodily harm.

The Post’s response to the idea that innocent people might defend themselves is certainly predictable. But its wild “predictions” are out of its own warped imagination.

It is The Post, not the state of Florida, that is living in a “Wild West” fantasyland.

James E. Keenan
Middletown

Right on target!