To The Editor:
The United States is the indisputable leader among western industrialized nations in homicides by guns per 100,000 citizens. In fact, we are more than four times as murderous by guns than the runner-up, Switzerland. America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada and 16 times Germany. The reason is quite simple. America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population and owns 43 percent of the world’s guns. Can you believe those numbers? Where is the opportunity for a dead child, in one of our now many mass school shootings, to have our Declaration of Independence’s inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? I suppose that is subservient to the “right to bear arms.” I’ve heard the argument that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” How about “too many guns kill too many people?” Across the globe the facts are that more guns per person equals more deaths. And we are the country that proves it. Are we waiting for a visit to a Vermont school to do something about it?
If you would like more facts, please see www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts
