Firing Off a Memo on Guns and Politics

The timing of “Surrounded by Chaos in Iraq, Middle Class Takes Up Arms” (May 12) and the accompanying photo of a Baghdad arms bazaar couldn’t have been better. The fact that random inhabitants of a defeated enemy nation, under military occupation, can openly buy machine guns from sidewalk pushcarts might, I suppose, be easily overlooked, but consider this: Just a couple of days previously, President Bush, in a 180-degree flip-flop of a campaign promise, declared his support for a bill that would deny even law-abiding, Brady-checked American citizens access to a much milder class of semiautomatics (“A Fight to Extend Weapons Ban Is Likely,” May 9).

Bravo for life’s little ironies. And I use the plural because Dubya has to be reflecting right about now that he literally owes his current job to a group of disgruntled third-partyers who wanted to make quite clear to Al Gore that he couldn’t take their support for granted.

Chuck Hammill

Los Angeles