Opinion | Americans have to stop thinking that guns offer protection

Greed is listed as one of the seven deadly sins, and the greed those charts would show certainty is deadly for our citizenry.

Deborah Kahn, Brookeville

Until Americans stop believing the myth that guns are necessary for “protection,” we will never pass any meaningful control on the multitude of murderous weapons possessed by our citizens.

This myth is perpetuated by the National Rifle Association, the gun industry and politicians who run on fear of everything around us — our neighbors, random people who do not look like us, common criminals, etc.

In a Jan. 31, 2022, Los Angeles Times op-ed, “Thinking of buying a gun for self-defense? Don’t do it,” Steven J. Sainsbury, an emergency room physician, wrote that, in 25 years, he “treated hundreds of patients with gunshot wounds … criminals who shot each other … gun owners who killed their family members in drunken rages … suicide victims who shot themselves with an easily accessible handgun in their home. Yet in all those years of emergency medicine, I never treated a single person who was shot by a law-abiding citizen in self-protection. Not one.”

When you use a gun to “protect” yourself from a perceived threat, the person you shoot will likely be hurt or killed. You, the shooter, will pay a heavy price: if not jail time for the inability to justify the use of a gun, then time and expense of a trial in court, at the very least. And, it might be that the person from whom you are “protecting” yourself also has a gun and fires at you. Then it’s Russian roulette of who comes out unscathed.

There is never a good outcome when guns are involved; only injury and death with lingering consequences for the one hurt, agonizing sorrow for families of the one killed and likely jail time for the one who fires the gun.

Joy Harris, Lexington, Va.