Seek facts in debate over gun rights: "The New York Times editorial titled 'Confusion on Guns,' reprinted by the Enquirer (Nov. 23), is an example of arrogance or ignorance, neither of which stands that shrinking media behemoth in good stead. The paper asserts that 'America's confusion about the Second Amendment is now nearly total. An amendment that ensures a collective right to bear arms has been misread in one legislature after another.' While there is an ongoing debate about the Second Amendment, and volumes written on the subject, it is disingenuous in the extreme to make this assertion as if the New York Times were the final arbiter on the matter, or that this opinion represented settled law and fact."


Disappearing hunters: "Hunting in America has entered a long twilight. The number of license holders-roughly 15 million through 2004-has actually shrunk by about 2 million people since 1982, when the population was 230 million (versus 300 million today). Since 1990, the number of license holders in Massachusetts has dropped by 50,000, or 40 percent; in California since 1980 the number has fallen by almost half, from 540,000 to 300,000. In Michigan, there were 1.2 million licensed hunters in 1992-but fewer than 850,000 in 2004."