How can Margery Watts (Letters, May 7) call a guns amnesty that has taken thousands of weapons out of circulation and was backed by almost every police force in the country "a blunder on the part of this incompetent government"?

In trying to make some crude party political point she has apparently abandoned all common sense.

She suggests we all have guns at home as "a measure of security and a possible deterrent". Against what?

Violent burglaries are still extremely rare.

Having a gun at home, as experience in the US suggests, leads only to deaths in accidental shootings.

Most of those killed are children.

If the Government and the police, by taking in and destroying thousands of firearms, save one child's life, stop one shop assistant being terrified by an armed raider, stop one mentally ill person from being shot by the police for waving a gun around in public, or stop one person from killing someone they live with in a moment of anger, this amnesty will have been more than worthwhile.

-E M Telcs, Brighton