Editor: I appreciate your thoughts and column (The Times, Oct. 7) but wish to respond to a statement you made on the Opinions page.
You said: this nation (the US) seems to love its guns more than it loves its children. This I think is a grave misrepresentation of the people of the United States who love their children as deeply as Canadians.
Being able to own a gun to them falls into the realm of protection for themselves since their founding as a country. They have experienced attacks that we in Canada have not. It’s not a love of guns, per se (at least in the rational American mind.) But they feel strongly in a need to protect themselves and to take that option or right of self-defense from them is their issue.
Gun control as well is a good thing and all should be done to keep guns out of the hands of those who would kill for nefarious purposes. But to have the government controlling who does or does not have a gun is also a slippery slope. I think we as Canadians just don’t get it as we have not walked a mile in their shoes. This is a horrific situation that reaches deep into all our hearts as we recognize the suffering the breakdown as a society brings and we — and they — are reaping the consequences of that breakdown.
Deborah MacDonald,
Langley