Dear editor,
Last Monday morning I awakened to read an overnight email, informing me that one of the people killed in Kalamazoo by the Uber driver was Barbara Hawthorne, a close high school friend. By the end of the week four people were dead and 14 injured in Hesston. The senseless killing is getting too close to home.
Yes, the slaughter is done by people, not guns safely locked in gun safes with no one to pull the trigger, but all humans are at times emotionally frail. Who has not had a moment when he or she has lost it? And of course some people are much less stable than others. But even these people are human, not the “monsters” the media likes to call them in an effort to separate them from the rest of us.
What has caused this national tragedy is the combination of flawed humanity and a proliferation of high-powered automatic weapons readily available to everyone. When Keith and I visited Italy last October several people told us they would not consider visiting the U.S. for fear of being shot. This is how the rest of the world sees us.
I have no idea how to solve this.
Despite the NRA’s paranoia, no one in their right mind would seriously consider taking away all the firearms. Even if there were a unanimous national will to do so, the genie could not possibly be stuffed back into the bottle.
And of course there are legitimate reasons to own guns.
However, bolstering an insecure sense of one’s personal power is not one of them. We all need to accept our personal vulnerability as we realize that there are many ways in which we are not in control of our own lives. No amount of firepower can stop the wild storms of a disordered weather system or even the drunk driver swerving into our lane of the highway.
And the rampant rise of automatic weapon ownership, instead of making us more secure, has turned into yet another fearsome executioner spinning ever closer, out of control.
Sincerely,
Mary Ann Dvorachek,
Iola, Kan.
