LETTERS

Re “More victims? It’s a dead certainty,” Opinion, Sept. 20

It seems as if I hear this more and more every year. More shootings in small towns or “safe” communities are taking place every day.

Is it the number of handguns out there? Is it the recession? Is it because people simply snap? Maybe it’s simply circumstance and chance. If an individual does not own, or have the means to obtain, a gun, chances are no one is going to get shot.

Garret Griggs

Playa del Rey

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Thank you for the eloquent Op-Ed article concerning America’s ongoing gun tragedies. Our society is flooded with guns, and we are in denial about this issue. It is a public health and safety issue, and the NRA has turned it into a political one.

Ruth Rosen

Santa Monica

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Gun deaths happen every day, but it does not make it acceptable, especially for those of us who have lost a loved one to gun violence.

What about our rights as citizens to be able to send our kids off to school and college and not worry that they will be victims of an everyday occurrence that rarely happens in the rest of the industrialized world?

Suzanne Verge

Santa Monica

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Sadly and importantly, Jenny Price reminds us of the mind-numbing gun violence that plagues this country, month after month, year after year.

Gun deaths have long been one of the most consistent and characteristic facts of American life.

For so long, I have been heart-sickened by the arguments that these deaths are the price we pay for freedom, or that Americans are inherently a violent people, or that gun-control laws don’t work.

We cannot call ourselves a great nation when so many of our citizens’ lives are snuffed out. We can and must do better, opening a national dialogue with facts and ideas, not polarized rants and distortions. We can learn, compromise and preserve basic freedoms.

Bill Hoffman

Laguna Beach

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Yes, innocent people do get killed with guns. We hear about it all the time.

But when do we hear about the citizens who have been able to protect themselves and save their lives because they had a gun? You know the answer.

Lori Graham

Los Angeles

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In her zeal for a quick fix, the author cannot see beyond the fact that if someone is determined to commit a violent act, they will use whatever tool is at hand to do it.

Firearms are tools designed for a specific purpose and can be misused just as easily as a kitchen knife, chain saw, screwdriver, fertilizer, rat poison or an automobile. Why don’t we hear calls to ban automobiles every time someone is run over?

A handgun is a great equalizer in the hands of a would-be victim, especially when confronted by an attacker who is physically stronger. Faced with the choice of waiting for the coroner to identify my remains or defend myself, I’d choose the latter any day.

Jeff Ho

Banning

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Too many valuable, innocent lives are lost as a result of gun violence each year.

The 2nd Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms, but the Founding Fathers did not intend for Americans to kill other Americans; they wanted the people to be able to protect themselves from danger. What a tragic waste.

Staci Adlin

Chatsworth

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Price’s strong feelings about gun violence are understandable.

Her understanding of U.S. history and the 2nd Amendment misses the mark. This is a violent country, founded by armed revolutionaries who believed that freedom was worth dying for and whose union was cemented by a horrendously bloody Civil War. Our nation’s ascendancy to international preeminence was a result of the spectacularly costly violence of World War II.

This is the country you live in, Ms. Price, and this is the country millions seek to enter each year for the incomparable freedom we enjoy.

Wishing we were more like Europe, that nonviolent continent that brought us the Crusades, colonialism, fascism, world wars, the Holocaust and the Inquisition, is your right -- guaranteed by the blood of armed citizens who would rather be dead than see that wish come true.

Jeff Licht

Huntington Beach