In Karin Leuthy’s Maine Voices column of May 22 (“Augusta fails to recognize that gun injuries, deaths are a public safety crisis”), she decries the ownership of guns as a public menace, using deaths by suicide (using guns) as an example of why we should reduce the number. Would she prefer the far more painful suicide by knife, or the agonizing delay of death by pills, to be the norm?

She admits that car deaths kill more teenagers, but stops short of condemning the use by kids of the more lethal automobile, seemingly giving a pass to what becomes, often, a 2,000-pound unguided missile that kills and maims indiscriminately, without even having the intent to hurt that would accompany most gun deaths.

She ignores the easily researched facts that a state with a high rate of gun ownership, like Idaho, has approximately the same number of gun deaths as Massachusetts, at the lower rate of ownership.

Exactly what law would she enact that would make a bit of difference?

John Nichols

Portland