To the Editor:

The world has changed a lot since I was 11.  Back then, a neighbor started the Albany Junior Rifle Association. We were taught how to shoot and, above all, gun safety. It was affiliated with the National Rifle Association.

My first gun was a 22-caliber bolt action. When my father took me deer hunting, he used a 30-30 lever action. He never chambered more than three bullets.

Why three bullets?

“Because if you couldn’t hit it in three you didn’t deserve to get it.”

Automatic rifles were considered “meat wasters.”

At 72, my views haven’t changed too much. The fascination with military assault rifles escapes me.

If some in society want to own one — I could live with that, but only if they were limited to a five-round magazine. You can hunt, target shoot, and defend yourself and your family with five bullets.

High-capacity magazines turn a gun into a killing machine. A weapon created to kill as many as possible in as short a time as possible.

When this capability falls into the wrong hands, Los Vegas happens. Fifty-eight people die and over 400 get wounded in less than 10 minutes.

As a society, we cannot stop killing, but we do have the ability to limit the killing and limit the carnage should the worst-case scenario happen. To say that common-sense laws regarding universal background checks, age limits, bump stocks, and magazine limits can’t be crafted is totally ludicrous.

Political excuses to the contrary are the stuff you put in your garden to make the tomatoes grow.

Bill Goergen

Guilderland