If I have it right, Andee Reardon (of Women for Gun Rights Maine) describes taking people off the streets as a more appropriate use of our freedoms then removing automatic weapons from citizens’ hands so that killing multiple people is more difficult (“Letter to the editor: We must remain armed and disciplined,” Nov. 7).

My sense is that this solution is more in line with a totalitarian rule of law and the removal of true constitutional rights, as it would be based on someone’s mental state. That would require the detaining and housing of hundreds of thousands of people with a psychiatric diagnosis despite the total inability to determine whether people with mental challenges are dangerous to anyone.

Sounds like a pretty problematic answer (think Japanese internment camps) to the simplicity of allowing removal of automatic and semiautomatic weapons, which have no bearing on hunting or normal use involving protection of person and property.

Dan Robbins
Portland