Civilized people around the world, from Western Europe through Russia and China to Japan, open their daily newspapers and read about a teenager in America that bought an assault weapon in a gun shop and proceeded to wipe out 17 of his peers in a high school in Florida. They are incredulous! How can this happen in a civilized nation? How do we explain?
I lived much of my life in the northwestern quadrant of Ohio. Year after year I read the statistics about gun deaths in Detroit. Almost without fail the annual average of homicides in that city exceeded 400, while just across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, not once in a 30-year period was the average homicide count over 10.
How do we explain this?
I also lived in Japan off and on three different occasions, teaching oral English in different high schools and universities from the southern tip of Kyushu to Tokyo. I can assure you no student in their worst nightmare would ever dream of being gunned down in a classroom. Not even policemen carry guns in Japan. Why worry?
Wake up Congress! We have a gun problem in America.
Carl D. Liechty, Findlay
