An intelligent response to the whole gun issue. I tend to agree with this letter - it's society that is the problem, not just guns themselves... but I also feel that guns are a problem of their own. Here is the letter, in response to seeing the gun section of my web site:

Just as a gee wiz according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1993) only one out of three violent crimes in America involve the use of a weapon. Of all violent crimes 32 percent involved a weapon: 9 percent a handgun, 7 percent a knife, and 6 percent a blunt object (feel free to visit the BJS website and check my stats). Sorry, but your fear of America should should not take the normal psychological adjustment technique of projection. That being projecting your fear on firearms and away from much greater social problems steaming from a myriad institutionalized, learned, and long developed patterns of cultural, political, and again institutional deficiencies within the American society.

The problem of violence in America has little to do with firearms. It lies much deeper within the vast number of ignored social problems plaguing this country. By getting all spun up over gun control we only turn our focus away from those larger root issues which never really get looked at seriously. Our country is very much so culturally different than other countries. Don't immediately take learned cultural information formed from years of learning within your environment and generically apply it to mine. Don't immediately see firearms and think....there that is the problem. There is a reason behind the violence and until we properly address these reasons gun control will do little to solve them. It will be like painting over a rust spot on a vehicle; only covering the problem while the rust still deep down continues to eat at the very foundation of the vehicle.

Also how about the media who plays a large part of social construction and how most people get their information from the media and how they project weapons as evil in order to capture your attention. Nothing glues a couch potato to the TV like a good killing. The media will show it to you over and over and talk about it for weeks and get you so spun up over it it makes you think it was happening right outside your door, that it happened for no reason, that it happens every day, and it could happen to you next. This is a large country I have never seen a mass killing with a firearm while eating at McDonalds, and I am not so easily swayed by the media (who wants you to tune in so they can show you commercials and make big bucks off your fear) to get so spun up that it causes me to loose site of the true problems and live in a state of anger and fear toward the object used by the offender who with proper social programs in place (it would take years for the programs to become effective) may not have ever committed the crime in the first place . The media and this country ignores the person who did it, and the social factors that caused them to do it and what the root causes were.

Sorry I rambled, I could explain much more but I would be writing all night and am very tired--need my sleep. Thanks for allowing me to write. I am a very open and friendly person so please do not take this e-mail as a personal affront to you; only to the topic at hand. I respect and honor your opinion as well I hope you do mine. People with opposite views are important, they allow for diversification in thought and actually stimulate growth within our society.

If you do place this e-mail on your website I would appreciate it if you would include the whole writing as not to accidentally take anything out of context.

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