This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
We cannot adequately control violent people with guns. Therefore, we need to adequately control access to guns.
According to the National Institute of Justice, as of 2009, Americans owned an estimated 310 million firearms. The National Rifle Association wants us to respond to gun violence by increasing gun ownership and spreading the gun culture to children via heavily armed school environments.
A logical outcome of shooting our way out of the gun violence problem, and coincidentally enriching the gun industry and the NRA that it funds, is actually an arms race of increasingly deadly rapid-fire automatic weapons. That is not what our children need.
By most measures of crime, Israel is better off than America, despite very stringent gun ownership rules in Israel. Only about 2.5 percent of the Israeli citizenry legally owns firearms, compared to a 2011 Gallup poll in which 47 percent of American families acknowledged having at least one gun in the house.
Our purchase of guns has not bought us safety or peace of mind. It's time to restrict access to automatic weapons while we're taking a hard look at the glorification of violence in the video-game industry and in Hollywood.
Christopher R. Jones
Salt Lake City