About Jodey Bateman Pablo Neruda Translations by Jodey Bateman Contributors Abuela Musica Jalapeno Peppers Children’s Page Finder Submissions

Letter from Prison | Poem

 
 
27 September 1999
 
          "Don’t know if I’ve told you I am totally against guns....We average around 30k murders of young kids a year, and another 20k of those over 25. It’s got nothing to do with crime on the rise...it’s got to do with having a country which is for the most part emotionally trained by the media and entertainment industry. Common sense tells you that when 20 murders are shown on average per evening on television...then murder will become a natural outlet for those who are schooled by television. 

          "They give us that Constitutional jive, a constitution designed for this land when it was a wilderness, and not for a civilized nation.... They say, if a man hadn’t been able to find a gun to do his dirty deed, he would have found a knife. That’s such crap. Guns go fast...knives go slow. Drunks, druggies, emotional people, would have time to rethink their anger if no gun was available. Death row would be half as full. Do they think Phil Hartman’s wife would have stabbed him to death if no gun was available? The absence of guns would save thousands of lives a year...period."

- William C. Payton

next


 
.
Back to William
Home to Moongate