Baby-killing clinics don’t deserve support

Editor Kristin Palpini says, “Abortion isn’t the murder of a baby” (Between the Lines: Defund cancer screenings? Oct. 1-7, 2015). Excuse me? Of course it is. What a despicable sentiment! Planned Parenthood is in the business of ending lives, not saving lives. We’ve been told women go to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings, but CEO and President Cecile Richards just admitted last month that there are no mammogram machines in any of her baby-killing clinics. We’ve been told there is no organ trafficking at Planned Parenthood, but in several videos, abortionists have been caught laughing and sipping wine as they play a morbid game of The Price Is Right with dead baby pieces. Libs are horrified when innocent people are shot to death, yet every day at Planned Parenthood innocent people are murdered. And you libs couldn’t care less.

Having no tattoos saved my skin

This is not a tattoo story. I have no tattoos. After men with guns in El Salvador surrounded me shouting “Show us your tattoos! Show us your tattoos!” and I had none to show and so was eventually released — alive — I vowed never to get a tattoo. That was 26 years ago.

I was a young freelance journalist in El Salvador in 1989 during a major uprising by leftist rebels against their right-wing government, dominated by death squads. After spending the night with a small rebel force in the capitol I was captured by enraged soldiers who were searching for “a tall North American terrorist with a big bushy beard and tattoos.” The Salvadoran army was convinced that their problem was foreign fighters flocking to the rebel ranks, and they were dead keen to capture one.

I am 6’ 1” and have a goatee, and so fit their description. But I had no tattoos, and that was the mark of Cain they needed. When I got back to the States in ’93 tattoos were all the rage, the mark of the hipster and tribal youth, powered by new technologies.

I passed.

Gun laws are here to protect us from ‘law-abiding’ gun owners

It’s time to let go of the myth that controlling the gun purchases of law-abiding citizens will not stop the carnage because criminals will still have guns. We must know by now that the perpetrators of mass shootings are law-abiding citizens using legally purchased guns and assault weapons. It is impossible to scrutinize the mind of every gun purchaser with any accuracy so those who have no record of arrest or mental illness can buy whatever guns they want. These shooters at schools, movie theaters, malls, churches, etc. are all first timers.

They are law-abiding citizens until they aren’t and then it’s too late.

Having a gun in the home will not make you safer. It puts you and your family in danger. Homes with guns are much more likely to have a suicide, a homicide, an accident or a home break-in. The best we can do is take assault weapons and high capacity magazines off the market and limit sales to one gun per month which will limit the supply to the black market.

We need to stop the “law-abiding” citizens who are killing our children with their legally purchased guns.