Dear Editor: People Kill People?

Dear Editor,

So, some of you still hold to the addiction induced belief that “guns don’t kill people…” That may be true in an alternate universe using alternative facts showing that people are in control, but not in this universe. In this universe people have never been in “control,” especially when it comes to guns. People do not control guns. Guns control people.

An example: Missoula’s Hellgate High on the third day of 2021 classes. The report of a gun on campus “controlled” all things that followed.

People were not the threat. School authorities did not call law enforcement and say there are people on campus, send the SWAT team. The SWAT team did not rush to the school in combat gear armed with assault weapons because there were “people” on campus. Locked down students did not make emergency calls home and parents did not rush to the school in a panic because “people” were on campus. No, the report of a GUN on campus, that was the threat. That threat, not people, controlled all things. Every shooter involved in the 725,00+ gun deaths this 21st century were no threat until they picked up a gun. The “controller,” the “dominator,” the “cause of death”: the gun.

The type of gun controls the outcome as well. Las Vegas Strip: 58 dead, 527 injured. Sandy Hook Elementary: 27 dead, two injured. Stoneman Douglas High: 17 dead, 14 injured.

Assault weapons, mega-magazines, some with bump stocks. Those deadly weapons were in control.

It does not mean that “people” are not guilty as hell as well. The shooters, the manufacturers, the retailers, the buyers, the federal and state government, gun-running gun traffickers, the American People. You and I. In my view, we are all guilty of conspiracy to commit.

This is fact. This is reality, this is the status quo, this is life..and death.

In this world, on this planet inhabited by this “people,” the gun, unchallenged but by the few, is in control. Along with Satan!

Also, study the 725,000 death certificates of the victims of gun violence in the 21st century and take note of what the medical examiner’s entered on the cause of death line. You will not find any that read “people” or “out of control people” or person, or mentally ill person. What do you all think you will read? Hmmm, I wonder? A gun shot victim, a cause of death. 725,000+. What will you read?

A quote from The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, this nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organization, founded in 1974: “Further, almost one in ten (3,390) gun deaths in 2019 were children and teens, the second highest number of annual child and teen gun deaths in twenty years. In 2019, firearms were the leading cause of death for American children, teens, and young adults ages one to 24.”

“The leading cause.” Number one. And 2020 was much worse. And 2021 is worse than 2020. The leading cause of death: Guns. Defend that, people.

Gerald Johnson

Cardwell, Montana