Our country’s legislators are engaged in one fierce battle as to what they can do to curb more gun violence. As well they should be — 30,000 are killed each year with guns. Some seem to think that mild to strict gun laws will stop all this killing. I believe that even strict gun laws themselves will probably only prevent a small number of senseless killings. Having said that, what will prevent many more deaths will be the fact that our legislators cared enough to pass such laws. If our legislators don’t care enough to stop the killing, why should their constituents?

In some ways I agree with the National Rifle Association’s statement, “It’s not the guns that kill, it’s those that own the guns that kill people.” That’s a bit simplistic, however — nice slogan.

The real problem is that we Americans live in a culture of violence: We grew up on endless Westerns where nearly every dispute was settled with a gun, cop shows that nearly always start or end with killing, usually with a gun. Our news reports that many unarmed civilians are shot by cops. We even had one in Maine where a guy was shot in the back. The cop claimed self-defense and got away with it, as they usually do.

Now we get to the real killer. Endless wars and the glorification of militarism. I do not mean this as an affront to most veterans and soldiers. They are pawns in this whole fiasco as much as us. I am myself a veteran. There’s a lot of money to be made and power to be gained with killing.

We can all reduce gun violence by refusing to make unqualified heroes out of those who kill with a gun.

Peter P. Sirois

Madison

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