Your Opinion: Response to Sampson on gun control

Dear Editor:

I suppose the right wing response is not altogether unexpected either. They perhaps should have waited until after the funerals to call for more guns in schools as "security," but oh well. Perhaps we should just agree to store assault rifles in every classroom of every untrained teacher to head off further tragedy.

It's not like anyone would ever misuse such a thing.

I jest, of course, Mr. Sampson, but my point remains the same.

While it is true that car accidents and alcohol kill people, your argument is fundamentally flawed. Cars are not intended to be used as weapons, and the deaths caused by them are accidental; however, guns are designed expressly with the purpose of killing in mind. Cars are designed to transport people: guns are designed to kill and destroy.

This is not an isolated event: guns are often used for violence. In 2011, guns used in homicides killed approximately 11,101 people. It remains a fact that none of these murders could have a occurred without the murder weapon. And those are merely the lethal incidents.

Yes he was clearly a disturbed individual, but he would not have to been able to kill so many if it were not so easy to obtain assault rifles and other weapons in this country: if the shooter had not access to so many extremely lethal weapons, this would have been a very different story.

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