As a proud National Rifle Association life member, I thank the Sun Post for printing its March 30 editorial, “Citizens’ right to keep guns has been vindicated” (Page 6).

For the life of me, I cannot understand what took those six Washington, D.C., residents so long to challenge local gun-ban laws that prohibited people from registering a handgun and carrying it from room to room in a home. As reported in the Sun Post, D.C. laws also required that all licensed firearms be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.

Few people know (or care, it seems) that the firearm death rate in Washington, D.C., (up to 2006) is 80.6 per 10,000. If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months (up to 2006) and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 10,000 soldiers for the same period. That means that you are about 25 percent more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. capital, which has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the nation, than you are as a U.S. soldier in Iraq.

The government should vote to give the citizens the right to self defense, or we should pull out of Washington, D.C., immediately, as it cannot protect the citizens of its community.

For those who think banning guns works, why do the New York, Washington, D.C., Detroit and Chicago cops need guns Hint: Each of these cities voted to ban the legal ownership of firearms for the “everyday” citizen. Big shots can still get away with it.

If banning firearms work, why is Washington, D.C.’s low murder rate of 80.6 per 10,000 due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis’ high murder rate of nine per 100,000 due to the lack of gun control

By the way, has anyone ever read the crimes-against-the-person rate of Vermont or Alaska Another hint: It’s very, very low. Why Both are right-to-carry states and have what is called the “Shall Issue,” which means you qualify to buy a firearm, you pay your money, there’s a quick phone check and, if you are clean, you are out the door with the firearm and have the right to carry it concealed! Gasp — can you imagine that And their crime rate scrapes the bottom of the charts.

Suffice to say, the politicians, media personalities, etc., need to give up their armed bodyguards and try to live like the rest of us. If they did that, the laws would change.

Al Barth of Manteca is a life member of the National Rifle Association.