Letters to the Editor: There are 400 million guns in America. What did we expect?

To the editor: It is estimated that there are about 400 million guns in the United States, and there are no truly effective laws to control firearm ownership. (“‘Another Dylann Roof ... another Emmett Till’: Buffalo reels from racist mass shooting,” May 15; “Churchgoers tackled, hogtied gunman after deadly Laguna Woods church shooting,” May 15; and “Man is shot and killed outside Grand Central Market, police seek gunman,” May 14)

When you read about another shooting, don’t be surprised. What did you expect?

There are few areas of the country safe from gun violence. And by all indications it will continue. All the sorrow, grief and bold speeches, will not discourage nor bring an end to gun violence.

When will our elected representatives commit, once and for all, to passing laws that protect our citizens and preserve our civilization?

Derek M. Torley, Corona del Mar

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To the editor: Today is so different from my youth in the 1960s. We had a living Constitution that allowed for rights not enumerated to meet the needs of modern society.

Today, it is as if the right of people who hate to have far too many guns is worth more than the lives of the people they kill. We have voting laws passed by states that deter votes from people the lawmakers don’t agree with. The rights of women are decided by men and religious organizations, with the sanctity of birth greater than that of life.

Maybe the Constitution really is dead and we can go back to English rule. They seemed to have done better without enumerated rights.

Alex Durdines, Claremont

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To the editor: The shooting in Buffalo was an apparently racially motivated crime, an example of violent extremism. The alleged shooter called his victims “replacers.”

He believed in the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that white people are being replaced by nonwhites in a “white genocide.” This theory was once a fringe idea, but it has recently become a talking point on social media, on a powerful cable news network and even by a former president who said that there were good people “on both sides.”

We Americans must stop hating. It is evermore dividing our country. It is tearing us apart. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., we must “stick with love” because “hate is too heavy a burden to bear. “

Alba Farfaglia, San Clemente

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To the editor: If COVID-19 doesn’t get you, a gun will.

We could have largely prevented both pandemic and gun deaths. But our national will, or lack thereof, and our “me first” culture got in the way.

So much for the greater good.

Alison M. Grimes, Yorba Linda

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To the editor: Sunday’s print L.A. Times offers a snapshot of the “pro-life” utopia that Republicans have spent decades building in America.

Citizens legally convert themselves into machines of mass death so frequently that hand wringing and offers of “thoughts and prayers” are impossible to deploy convincingly.

Hundreds of thousands die needlessly because ludicrous partisan vitriol substitutes for basic scientific fact.

The most private and intimate human actions concerning sex, sexuality and reproduction are criminalized and subjected to constant government oversight and the threat of punishment and imprisonment.

Those seeking refuge from violence are treated with callous disregard of their humanity and greeted with paranoia and bigotry rooted in the prejudiced assumption that their very existence is a threat to our country’s survival.

Well done Republicans. I cannot think of a more grotesque distortion of life, liberty and justice for all.

Greg Seyranian, Redondo Beach