Letters: Want fewer gun deaths? Try fewer guns

How long will we continue to ignore the elephant in the room? We have prayer services, memorial services, mountains of flowers and stuffed animals, moments of silence when shootings occur. But we ignore the fact that America is awash in guns.

Of course, we don’t know for sure just how many guns folks have in America because our Congress has forbidden government funding for gun-violence research. However, the latest data from private sources indicate that there are more guns than people in the United States — possibly as many as 112 guns per 100 citizens.

From 2005 to 2015, a total of 71 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks on American soil; 301,797 were killed by gun violence. We focus on terrorism while we kill ourselves by the thousands.

I do not believe that Americans are more violent than citizens of other nations, but I do believe — and the data support my belief — that the plethora of guns in America is the problem. Can we stop the silence and instead begin to deal with the real problem of violence in our nation by dealing with the problem of guns?