SIR: I keep hearing about gun clubs. When I was in the armed forces, if you were caught with live ammunition or arms, excluding the cleaning of such, you were on a charge. Personally I don't give a damn if I don't see one again.

You have to have law and order in a land and many a police officer has lost his life in the pursuit of a criminal. But to arm the police, then you might as well arm all the old pensioners that have been mugged and wrongly treated in society.

If men don't negotiate using a combination of mind, soul and common sense, I don't know where we are heading. If something threatened the planet, excluding ourselves, all countries would be together.

Mr A Hulme,

Crompton Street, Farnworth.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.