To the Editor:

The primary function of a firearm is to kill people. Killing people is what most guns are specifically designed to do. This fact begs the following questions:

Since the 30,000 gun deaths per year in the United States are nearly all murders, suicides and accidents, and few deaths are prevented by armed self-defense, why are guns valued for self-defense?
Since many children are killed by guns, why would a parent want to possess one?

Do gun-owning parents think much about how they would feel if one their guns killed one of their children? Do they ever consider that if they got rid of their gun, the gun would never kill their kid?

Remember the guy a year or two back who brought his 8 year-old to the gun range and handed him an Uzi, which the kid fumbled and shot himself with? Ever wonder how Newtown hit that guy, or what he feels like every Christmas?

Why isn’t the Second Amendment fulfilled by the existence of the National Guard? If not, should the amendment be repealed?

Since a driver’s license to operate a car is not a universal “right,” but a privilege granted by the state, why should there be anywhere a “right” to operate a firearm?

If the second amendment gives individuals the “right to bear arms”, shouldn’t it also confer the right to bear bazookas, machine guns, cruise missiles, armed drones and atomic bombs?

If the NRA supports the “right” of citizens to bear arms for the purpose of “defense” against a central government deemed autocratic by gun-owners, should it be regarded as a terrorist organization under the Homeland Security Act?

What are the financial links between NRA leaders and gun manufacturers, and to what extent are rank and file members pawns in a giant scam turning America into a gun-toting dystopia profiting the firearms industry?

Since the widespread deployment of private firearms in the United States is the primary cause of 30,000 yearly deaths, is not gun-ownership a public health issue? Shouldn’t guns and gun ownership therefore be eradicated like cancer or polio? As a social pathology shouldn’t guns and gun ownership be abolished as was slavery?

– John McColgan, Savin Hill Avenue