Letter: Fixating on guns? Please
Terry Quinn’s rebuttal on gun use in mass murders is so disingenuous, it’s laughable. While I don’t want to take guns away from responsible gun owners, there absolutely should be a national standard on gun ownership.
Semi-automatic weapons have indeed been used in more of the recent sensational mass shootings. Quinn claims that “the Boulder shooter also had a handgun,” but which weapon did he ultimately use for his killing spree? It’s true that semi-automatic weapons must be fired one shot at a time — however, they are designed for rapid fire and accommodate high capacity magazines with 20-30 rounds each.
So, Terry, they account for 26% of the last 80 shootings?That doesn’t bother you? How about number of deaths? What purpose does this kind of weapon serve?
A Newsweek analysis found that a semi-automatic rifle was used in 21 mass shootings over the last 10 years. Those were some of the deadliest incidents in U.S. history: Las Vegas with 61 dead, the Orlando nightclub where 49 were killed, and Sandy Hook, 28 murdered, just to name a few.
You can try to make the automobile comparison, but that surely pales by the sheer volume of multiple deaths at one time. As for Quinn mentioning the Boston Marathon dangerous “pressure cooker,” well, that wasn’t actually the pot, it was the bomb inside, and the viscous misguided hate by the perpetrators.
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I don’t have a solution for the insanity that drives these lunatics to commit these atrocities, but having some kind of psychological hurdle to pass prior to purchasing this kind of nonsensical destructive weapon surely would seem to be prudent.
Deb Dreyfuss
Arrowhead
