Letters: Thank military, not gun owners, for our freedom

Lest some readers actually believe “it was because most Americans are gun owners” that Germany and Japan didn’t invade our homeland during World War II, as stated in a recent letter to the editor (“Ignore extremes on gun control,” Dec. 10), please allow me to state the facts:

The Germans planned to invade England, but found crossing the 30-mile-wide English Channel too big an obstacle. Supporting a 3,000-mile invasion of the United States without aircraft carriers and a substantial navy would have been beyond hope.

As for the Japanese, they took possession of two of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in June 1942. It was a diversion for their concurrent invasion of Midway, a U.S. island 1,300 miles from Hawaii. The Midway invasion failed when the U.S. Navy sank all four Japanese aircraft carriers. After the Battle of Midway, six short months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were reduced to defending the territory they had already occupied. Having lost the heart of their naval power, any Japanese invasion of new territory was out of the question.

It is our armed forces, not gun owners, who protect our homeland.

This story was originally published December 30, 2015 at 6:19 PM.