Jan. 9, 2026 8 AM PT
To the editor: Guest contributor Adam Winkler’s op-ed about the impact of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow open carry of firearms in California demonstrates once again the folly of “originalism” and the need to repeal and replace the 2nd Amendment (“The Supreme Court made a mess out of gun laws,” Jan. 8).
The patchwork of contradictory gun laws in states across the country endangers all of us. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of gun death in the world, and the costs in hospital bills for the injured, law enforcement and court cases add up to billions of dollars a year. It is time to stop the hand-wringing, “thoughts and prayers” and shooting sites littered with candles and flowers and end the obscene reverence for the 2nd Amendment.
Bob Ladendorf, Los Angeles
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To the editor: If we’re going to argue that regulations are invalid because they didn’t exist in the era of the musket, we must apply that same logic to the weapons themselves. You cannot claim an 18th-century right for a 21st-century killing machine. It leaves us to wonder: If the definition of a “firearm” keeps expanding while the regulations remain frozen in the past, where does the madness end?
John Arcos, Long Beach