Dave Ricker’s letter to “stop going after our guns: teach kids respect” raises the point that “evil does not abide in a firearm but in the heart of man.”

Of course I agree with this but it raises the question, why does the U.S. have a 25.2 higher rate of gun homicide than all the other high income countries? Do we have more evil people in America? Are our children more disrespectful, uncaring, violent people? If the cause of these homicides is evil, he must believe Americans are much more evil than other nations. What else could be the answer?

As a mother, grandmother and teacher, I do not think that is true. I find most of our young people to be very caring and to want to make our world a better place. Watching the young people from Parkland has reinforced this belief.

Perhaps easy access to guns for angry people could be a contributing factor? We have 5 percent of the world population, but 31 percent of mass shooters. Americans own 50 percent of the civilian-owned guns in the world.

And again we are 5 percent of the world population. Could this availability of guns be a contributing factor to this horrific record we hold?

I do not think we can ignore these statistics.

Unless you just think we are a land of very evil people who coincidentally have many, many guns.

Valerie Razsa

Gray

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