Letters to the Editor: Shot for ringing the wrong doorbell: 'This is what 400 millions guns do'

To the editor: This is what 400 million guns do. They shoot a 16-year-old knocking on the wrong door. They kill a 20-year-old driving up the wrong driveway.

We are unwilling participants in an experiment gone horribly wrong. The hypothesis of the right is that the more guns in our hands, the less danger we are in. It is not the mass murders that are killing us in record numbers. It is the drip, drip, drip of these kinds of shootings that has created a raging flood drowning us in blood.

We can't see the forest for the guns that appear in the hands of those like an old man who attempts to take a life without reason or cause. Or a man who fires two shots into a car turning around on his driveway because he has a weapon at the ready.

We are a nation now trained to shoot first and ask questions later, the core belief being that we are always in imminent danger.

Which is far too close to a terrible truth when there are 400 million tools with which to scratch an itchy trigger finger.

Robert Nussbaum, Fort Lee, N.J.

..

To the editor: My God, what is wrong with us?

A boy almost gets killed ringing the wrong doorbell. A cheerleader is shot for going to the wrong car. A woman is killed for going into the wrong driveway.

And the National Rifle Assn. convention is bigger than ever, even catering to children.

America’s soul is very sick, and I am ashamed of this fear and ignorance. When do we turn this ship around?

Sandy Mishodek, Running Springs, Calif.

..

To the editor: It appears the chickens have come home to roost. The GOP and NRA mantra is something about "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun" blah blah blah.

The "good" guys are now killing teens for the audacity of knocking on their door while Black, pulling into the wrong driveway or other heinous capital offenses.

This is the gun-soaked, fear-based society our Republican lawmakers have engineered. Good luck getting the genie back in the bottle.

Greg Hilfman, Topanga

..

To the editor: I'm struggling to think of a sadder, more perfect illustration of the sunk-cost fallacy than America's unwavering investment in guns as a tool of public safety, even after the death and grief they have caused.

Can anyone help me? Anyone?

Carl Matthies, Pasadena

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.