March 1

Citizens' guns outnumber all in government, 8-1

Letter to the Editor

It seems that every day there are more senseless shootings. More shootings are mentioned on the news than there are drug and cellphone commercials. There are also almost as many stories about solutions to stop the gun violence.

One group wants to restrict gun ownership to sane persons only. Today, Bobby is sane. Tomorrow Bobby buys three automatic rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition. A month after the purchase, Bobby gets a brain tumor and goes nuts. Well, you can fill in the rest of the scenario.

The gun lobbyists say, "We law-abiding citizens need guns to protect us from the crazies." Right. Eighty-five percent of the mentally ill are less prone to violence than the "law-abiding" citizen. Don't mentally ill persons have a right to protect themselves, too?

Some gun lobbyists say, "Let's concentrate on the mentally ill to protect ourselves from them." Shouldn't we have been treating the mentally ill (all the ill, for that matter) all along because it's the humane thing to do?

Now for the big one. Gun lobbyists say, "We need more guns to protect us from our government."

In the United States, private citizens own 270 million guns. The military owns 3 million guns and our police departments own less than a million guns. Already we outnumber our entire government eight to one in guns.

At least 50 countries have far stricter gun laws than the U.S. None of them have taken away people's freedom. See GunPolicy.org

Supposedly, we went to Iraq to secure their "freedom." When my son was over there he said he never saw so many guns in the hands of civilians. What good did those guns do them?

Peter P. Sirois

Madison

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