Letter: A different take on guns

To the editor:

Joni Lindgren said of the students speaking out about school shootings: “What do they want? Nearly all Americans want gun ownership prohibited for all convicted felons, mentally disturbed, those on the terror watch list and those involved in domestic violence acts … .”

Uh, Joni, you don’t pay much attention to laws, I take it. Convicted felons are already prohibited from purchasing firearms. Mentally disturbed? In many cases it is the same for them, but mentally disturbed can be defined in many ways, so it depends on the individual. “Those involved in domestic violence acts…” are and have been on that prohibited list for some time now.

Finally, you get to one that I can agree with but unfortunately, is not yet taken care of: those on the terror watch list. Still, as has been seen regarding the no-fly lists, it’s not impossible for the totally innocent to be added, and even on the terror watch lists. Gotta be very careful with those, don’t you think?

Question for you, Joni: there are over 300 million guns privately owned in America right now, and there are approximately 326 million citizens in this country. That is approaching one gun for every single man, woman and child.  If guns are the problem, why aren’t we all dead already?

The gun is merely an inanimate object, as you well know. It will not load itself, it will not walk itself to a school, it will not aim itself at a student, and it will not pull its own trigger. All that is done by a human, and virtually never is the human that does such a thing a member of the NRA or any other gun-rights group.

Food for thought, eh?

John Babush
Big Rock