a letter to the paper
A Tribune letter writer laments that guns “are just too available in the U.S.” (National gun problem, October 6)
I’m guessing the writer doesn’t know that we didn’t always have background checks for guns (1998) or FOID cards for gun ownership (1968). Buying a gun used to be a lot easier than it is today.
It’s not guns that are the problem. It’s people who want to hurt other people. Guns are just a convenient way to do that. You can do it from a distance, and it’s quick.
Sure, the easy availability of guns can help people who want to hurt other people do it more often.
But the Founders thought it was important that the people are armed (Read the Federalist Papers.), such that it is a part of the Bill of Rights to our Constitution. The bigger problem is that we have too many people in our country who want to hurt or kill other people.
I submit that when our country basically declared itself a secular nation back in the 60s, and anything having to do with God was essentially removed from our public schools, the public square, and the public consciousness, our society lost the moral groundings that caused us to value each other.
Plus, the push for diversity and the identity politics of the left have divided our country into all kinds of separate, competing groups, and we have lost everything that used to unite us. We are no longer united states nor a united people. Gun violence is just the symptom of a much deeper problem.
