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Ron Molen ("Descent Into Gun Culture," August 7) makes some amazing and absurd claims as he unreasonably attacks the LDS Church regarding guns in Utah. It would be interesting to know how Ron knows the number of private guns in the world and how he can deduce half of them are in the USA. I'll bet he's relying on someone else's specious claims. He says 100,000 dead and wounded people every year is the result. Come on, Ron. That's an average of 2,000 per state. Do you really believe Utah or even California each had 2,000 private gun casualties last year? The 100,000 is a ridiculous claim. I don't care for gun violence, but let's be accurate.
Next he claims more young men in Utah die from guns than from auto accidents. In all of 2012 Utah had only 49 homicides from all causes compared with 215 auto related deaths, the lowest since 1959.
Based on this, Ron's indictment that Utah is a hotbed of gun violence falls pretty short of his purpose. I wonder why he didn't take the LDS Church to task for not having a public stand against the damage knives do to young men, or the careless use of cars. Somehow I think all churches are concerned when lives are lost to any cause, and they deplore those tragedies. Ron assumes too much in his presumptions and rancor.
Stephen A. Van Dyke
Kaysville