Dear editor,
I read the opinion piece “Gun violence woven into American fabric; can we pull the thread,” with some disappointment. Once again the finger is pointed at the tools used rather than the deeper issue, which is why are we raising a generation of depressed, murderous, and suicidal children?
Firearm deaths among children and adolescents are a leading cause of death. There should be a realization that these children are killing each other or themselves. The second leading cause of death among children is traffic fatalities, and a close third is drug overdose/poisoning.
School shootings are a very small percentage of these gun deaths among children, but because politicians, media, and religion wave the flag vigorously and spotlight these events instead of pointing out that the majority of children being shot are due to urban violence and domestic abuse.
Passing more laws that clearly don’t work and are just a burden on legal owners/purchasers of firearms. It is foolish in my estimation to blame the tools used without examining the reasons that are the real cause. There are already background checks required to buy a gun. Why are people shocked and surprised that a mentally unstable 18-year- old, with no criminal record, is able to buy a gun? Piling on more gun laws won’t make a difference for people with no criminal history.
Why is it that the cities in the United States with the most restrictive gun laws in the nation have the highest amount of gun violence? Why did Chicago have over 4,100 people shot in 2021? At least 276 of those were age 16 and younger.
More gun laws aren’t the answer. We need to stop the pandering of politicians that try to make guns the issue rather than the underlying societal issues because it’s something they can point at and say “I’m fixing the problem.” The problem is that most layers of government/media tell us what to think, how to think it, and what/who to be afraid of rather than addressing the real problems.
“Why are we against keeping guns from the wrong people?” No one is against keeping guns from the wrong people. The issue is who constitutes the “wrong people.” The first guns law restricting firearms in this country were passed to keep people of color from having firearms. Gun laws, like most laws, are passed with the best of intentions (what could possibly go wrong?). Our government at all levels has repeatedly passed laws that were then weaponized against citizens. We don’t need more of that. Look up asset forfeiture sometime for prime examples.
Respectfully,
Kevin Hensel
Iola, Kan.
Editor’s note: Recent studies show that states with lax gun laws experience more deaths by guns, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas, for example, has the most deaths by guns, 4,164 for 2020, in the nation, a rate of 14.2 deaths per 100,000 Texans.
States with stricter gun laws, such as California, Hawaii, New York and Massachusetts, generally experience lower firearm mortality rates. California has a gun death rate of 8.5 per 100,000 citizens.
