LETTERS: SOME PEOPLE GET SPECIAL TREATMENT

To the editor:

There are few tragic events that do not include a bit of high comedy. Most coverage of the shootout in the U.S. Capitol's House offices contained expressions by various U.S. representatives to the effect that the Capitol, being the "people's house" and the "temple of democracy" should not, even in the interest of improved security, be made less accessible that it is. Such sentiments, when they come from the current crop of rightist Republican House leaders, are comically hypocritical.

In the "people's house" there are P*E*O*P*L*E. People walk around the hallways of the Capitol, go to the visitors gallery and watch the final formalities of laws being made, saunter up to the office their own representative to shake hands and tell him or her what a fine job he or she is doing. In other words, for people, anything goes -- anything except the offering of input as to the laws being made.

By contrast, under the present Republican regime, P*E*O*P*L*E* are treated to hospitality that is out of this world, hospitality that goes far beyond that which is accorded to people. I refer to those notorious occasions when corporate lobbyists -- P*E*O*P*L*E -- have been allowed to make themselves at home using committee word processors to make sure any bills in which they had an interest had all the goodies they wanted.

It may be that the Capitol is indeed a "temple of democracy," but P*E*O*P*L*E are the high priests of the temple, and people are the poor schmoes lying on the altar waiting to have their hearts excised.

Still on the subject of the Capitol shootout, I have heard further the father of the accused gunman referred to a couple of times as a responsible gun owners, the type the NRA idealizes as being someone who, in all respects, is worthy of owning the guns which we pointy-headed bleeding hearts would deny him. I do not wish to pile on the elder Mr. Weston, who, I doubt not, is truly suffering because of the act of his probably mad son. Still, is there anyone out there who considers keeping a pistol secured by nothing more than the weight of a heating pad, as Mr. Weston did, all the while that a son who blasts away at cats is in residence, to be responsible gun ownership? I shouldn't think many would, and neither do I.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.