Yet another letter to the editor in today’s N&R taking our local paper of record to task for running a big-ass full-page ad for the Reidsville Ace Hardware holiday gun sale featruing everything from Derringers to Rugers.
Today’s letter is from Lee Zacharias–who also happens to be my former UNCG professor:
I cannot begin to say how upsetting it was to me to turn the front page of Sunday’s paper to a full-page ad for guns from Ace Hardware, whose price “says it all … only while supplies last … limit two per customer per day.”
In the wake of school shootings, mall shootings, fast-food shootings, theater shootings, not to mention an indecent interval since the terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, I’m astonished by this ad and its prominence in the paper. Ace Hardware sells nuts and bolts. It sells many hardware essentials, but I will never patronize the store again and want to know if the chain paid extra for its placement, because, if it didn’t, the News & Record has no excuse.
Even so, the paper should have refused to run this ad. I once served as a juror on a capital murder case, and I recognize some of the models of the pistols. These are not guns that are used for hunting. Nor are they generally stored in a drawer beside the bed to protect a house from intruders. I call upon every like-minded person to join me in boycotting Ace Hardware.
Lee Zacharias
Greensboro
More letters here and here, with one of the readers announcing she had cancelled her subscription, saying she “cannot support a paper that chooses to run full-page ads for guns.”
The only thing that would make this situation even funnier would be if the N&R had run the ad opposite Susan Ladd’s column. Surely the brains down on East Market Street new better than to do that, but never assume.
