Editor:
Since 2001, 4,977 (and still counting) Americans have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, while back here at home during roughly the same time span (2001-09) – 23, 575 children have died from guns.
In those same two years, the number of preschoolers killed by guns was almost double the number of police officers killed in the line of duty – 173 preschoolers versus 89 police officers.
Between 1979 and 2009 (30 years) 116,385 children and teenagers were killed by guns here in the USA.
That’s twice as many as American solders killed in the Vietnam war (1955- 1975) – 58,209.
During those same years, if you look at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/CDC’s statistics on firearm deaths of children and teens, you’ll notice that deaths by homicide skyrocketed in the Reagan and Bush years to 3,625 per year.
Then, when Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law that included a 10-year ban on the manufacture, for civilian use, of certain semi-automatic firearms, the deaths plummeted over those 10 years to 1,771.
Speaks volumes to me.
What’s more important to you – your children or your guns?
Is this the price you’re willing to pay? We grieve mightily over each and every soldier lost, but nothing about the vastly greater number of children killed by guns on our own soil.
Where are you, all you combat vets? You know better than anyone the deadly realities of guns.
Another CDC National Center for Health Statistics stat: Homicide is a leading cause of pregnancy-associated injury deaths. Firearms were the leading mechanism for these homicides (56.6 percent).
Where are you, all you pro-lifers? It’s time to take a stand, don’t you think?
But if you don’t care about the children, here is another points to consider: Firearm violence may cost our country as much as $100 billion a year. That should touch your conservative soul, if nothing else.
Yeah, they might have their little gun safety classes, etc. But the overwhelming hysterical theme of the NRA is Guns for everyone! Guns ‘R’ Us. Guns everywhere and their means to that end is the lie that guns equal freedom.
Guns take you captive, they threaten, they strangle and choke off freedoms. Guns equal death. My deepest instinctual feeling about guns has always been that only bad people have them.
If you want to read about the 76 members of the NRA Board of Directors, go to http://www.MeetTheNRA.org. A money-making political machine – that’s all, folks.
One last fact: More settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than Indian attacks.
Diane Daiute
Sweet Home