This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Like so many gun control advocates Johnny Townsend ("Will we learn from Orlando? ... " June 19) focuses on rounds per minute and misses the real problem. Mass murderers look for defenseless crowds, unarmed crowds.
These may be school children left without armed protection, church congregations or people at movie theaters. It doesn't matter who the sheep are. It only matters that there are plenty of targets and nobody to intervene in the killing spree.
Remember what happened when a police officer, who fortunately was at the library, shot and killed a would-be shooter? He was rightly hailed as a hero. So let's realize the awful truth. Whenever there is an unprotected crowd there is a potential target for mass murder.
As to guns, yes, an AR-15 can fire a lot of bullets in a very short time, but the Orlando shooter had time to make phone calls. He wasn't in a big rush. He had a defenseless crowd waiting to be slaughtered. Ask yourself, what would have been the outcome had there been one off-duty cop in the crowd? We disarm crowds of people and then wonder why the terrorist chose this crowd. Did you ever notice nobody tries to hold up a gun store?
It isn't the guns. It's the terrorists who use them on defenseless crowds.
C.J. Welle
Sandy