The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

To The Eagle:

In last week’s edition, a fellow wondered why so much ado was made about last year’s 19,370 gun related fatalities. “Cars,” he wrote, “kill more people than guns.” That is sadly true. There were 42,060 vehicular fatalities in 2020.

Cars and guns are useful, dangerous tools embedded in our culture. Operating a vehicle is subject to stringent safety laws, and all cars must be registered in a national database. Guns should be also. The federal statute prohibiting a national firearms registry needs to be scrapped.

Background checks should access national, not just local, databases. Waiting periods should be greatly extended. “Red flag” statutes that separate unstable individuals from their guns need to be standardized nationwide and aggressively enforced.

There has been firearms regulation in this country since the 16th century. Such regulation is no more an infringement of the 2nd amendment than existing regulations are upon the other 26 amendments of our Constitution.

Another writer focused on the fact that many more lives are lost to accident, misadventure and disease, than are lost to gunfire. Apparently, being shot to death is a statistically insignificant event, in his opinion.

“So you have to ask yourself,” he wrote, “why the focus on guns?” That question would elicit some chilly responses from the devastated parents of children shot to death in their classrooms.

Eighteen students murdered by a sniper, University of Texas, 1966.

Fifteen students massacred by gun, Columbine High,1999.

Ten students shot and killed, Red Lake High, 2005.

Thirty three students shot to death, Virginia Tech, 2007.

Twenty seven first graders, just babies, shot to pieces, Sandy Hook Elementary, 2012.

Ten students gunned down, Umpqua Community College, 2015.

Those fatalities are from only six of 27 documented school shootings. That writer declared emphatically that 2nd Amendment rights “must be preserved at all costs.” I disagree.

Our national priority should be to preserve our children, not the 2nd Amendment, at any cost.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island