Letter to the editor: More guns means more shootings

As people are tiring of covid, the mass gatherings are resuming, and so are the mass shootings. No other country has this problem, and no other country is so saturated with guns. Coincidence?

I hear all the gun advocates’ arguments and scoff, like guns don’t kill, people do. It’s as silly as saying lawnmowers don’t cut grass. They always talk about the rights of law-abiding citizens, but all murderers were once law-abiding citizens.

No matter what specious arguments the gun people can fabricate, the fact remains that more guns inevitably lead to more shootings. Simple math. It’s amazing that so many people can be willfully blind to this obvious fact.

Often eclipsed by the highly publicized mass shootings are the nearly 40,000 gun deaths a year that we don’t hear about. A plane crash a day, but we look the other way. Only in America.

The outdated and ambiguous Second Amendment has limits, as noted by Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2008 decision (Heller) that interpreted it to mean that nearly anyone can own nearly any gun he wants, no questions asked.

A majority of Americans would like to see assault rifles banned, and background checks for all gun sales. So why does a vociferous minority get to impose their dangerous policies on the rest of us? Where do the rights of gun owners to keep their toys end, and the rights of the rest of us to life, liberty and happiness begin? As a child I admired Joe Cartwright, but I grew out of it. When will America grow up?

Al Duerig

Salem