Many thanks to Patrice Apodaca for shining a bright light on the dark side of Huntington Beach politics (“No matter what they call it, they’re banning books,” Daily Pilot, Nov. 5). She rightly points out that librarians are skilled professionals who deserve our respect and appreciation. The majority four of the seven council members continue to push agendas and policies that the vast majority of Huntington Beach citizens vehemently oppose. Apodaca is right that these repressive policies (including this book-banning folly) will only serve to galvanize the majority of citizenry against them. I am confident H.B.’s next election will restore sanity to city governance. In the meantime, we need to publicly call them out on their repressive and unpopular policies.

James Dowling
Huntington Beach

As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart opined with regard to pornography, “I know it when I see it.” And I know a book ban when I see it; that is precisely what we’re witnessing with the appointment of 21 Huntington Beach residents, with no required expertise in literature or library science, to review book purchases made by the Huntington Beach Public Library. Let us leave trained professionals — librarians — to make decisions on book purchases and the proper placement of those books.

Ben Miles
Huntington Beach

I have resided in Huntington Beach for 61 years. Age is a factor that prevents me from running the 10K and 5K races that I used to run. What I do have left is experience. On a trip to Berlin I saw the pit where books were burned. Book banning is the same thing. Over 5,000 books have been banned nationally in this country.

Under the guise of protecting children from sex and other subject matters, books such as “1984,” “Animal Farm” and “Fahrenheit 451” have been banned. This is an attempt to force someone else to your way of thinking, which is Fascism. This is what the conservative four members of the Huntington Beach City Council are attempting to do. I doubt if any of these council members have read these books, otherwise, why would they have such objections. The only way to let the con four know that they are out of touch with the majority is to vote no on their proposed charter changes and when the time comes vote them out of office. Fascism was defeated in WWII and there is no need for it to be reestablished here.

Richard C. Armendariz
Huntington Beach

Banning gun shows is OK

It was two steps forward and now one large step backwards for gun control advocates in Orange County last week (Judge overturns statewide ban on gun shows, orders O.C. fairgrounds to resume bookings, Daily Pilot, Nov. 2). State Sen. Dave Min in 2021 authored two successful bills that went into effect in 2022 that prohibited gun sales at the Orange County fairgrounds due to a law prohibiting firearm and ammunition sales on state-owned property that then opened the door to a statewide ban.

But in an unpopular decision, U.S. District Court Judge John W. Holcomb, a Trump appointee, issued Monday a ruling that granted the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the two laws that helped establish California’s lead in establishing gun safety laws. Min characterized the injunctions as “federal overreach that conservatives have so long decried.”

Despite the fact that a growing number of U.S. adults say gun violence is a very big problem in the country today, the NRA’s influence, which comes in the form of millions of dollars spent on political campaigns of senators who oppose gun-safety legislation, continues to dominate. (In 2019 the NRA spent $3.22 million to support legislators who oppose gun safety legislation). Not even 2,000 school shootings in the last 50 years can topple the influence of the NRA. The only way to solve this problem which our democratic allies decry, along with a majority of Americans, is to expose and defeat those legislators who are receiving money from the NRA and other pro-gun organizations.

Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach