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Letter: GOP legislators don't care about saving lives

(Alan Diaz | The Associated Press) This Wednesday, June 29, 2016, photo shows guns on display at a gun store in Miami. After a gunman killed more than 50 people in Las Vegas in the nation’s latest mass shooting, stocks in the gun industry rose, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

Currently, the opioid epidemic has the media’s and public’s full attention, as well it should. Distribution of pain pills has been poorly controlled and clearly tighter regulations are required; the national resolve to solve it is heartening.

How differently another epidemic is treated despite leading to more deaths in the last 25 years than those of all the Americans killed in the nation’s wars. We are talking 30,000 deaths every year, establishing a grisly status quo. The mass shootings are just the tip of the iceberg. And why? Greed-obsessed gun manufacturers own the National Rifle Association which, in turn, owns Republican legislators who have sold their souls for gun makers’ money.

Intelligent gun regulations, demanded by a huge majority, are simply dismissed by the GOP hustling a myth that no solution to gun violence exists. This is the perverse lie that curses the nation. Until more enlightened gun regulations are established, many will die unnecessarily.

Certainly citizens must realize that Republican legislators really don’t care about saving lives. They are like doctors with a lifesaving serum who refuse to use it.

Ron Molen, Salt Lake City