I’m staying away from US

I thought it best to send my message at and to the grassroots level, as emailing 50 governors, 100 senators and 435 House members is an overwhelming, onerous task even nowadays with the relative ease of the internet.

My message is simple: Money talks. I live in Canada, and I refuse to spend my “tourist” money in the

USA. I will not enter the U.S. until each state enacts tougher gun laws with restrictions on purchases, private sales, ownership, training and licensing, background checks, types of weapons, ammunition, add-ons such as bump stocks and silencers and open carry.

This applies especially to states bordering Ontario and those with popular tourist destinations such as Florida and Nevada. I have visited all of these before, but for now, never again.

The NR A has a disproportionate role, lobbying and financial influence on your elected representatives. Why would you allow its approximately 5 million members to outweigh the desires of the 245 million adults in the U.S. to control guns?

With more guns in the U.S. than the total population of men, women and children, it is far too dangerous to visit.

It does not take a good person with a gun to stop a bad person with a gun. One cannot dismiss these many mass shootings as the individual act of a deranged, mentally ill, lone wolf or radicalized person. Better and stricter gun laws and control would have reduced, if not the occurrence, then at least the toll of these mass murders.

The federal and state governments donotwanttotakeawayyourguns “from your cold, dead hands”; they want to control, not stop, ownership. It does not take an assault rifle with a bump stock to protect your business, home, property or livestock, nor does it take an AK-47 to kill animals for sport or food.

For now, I’ll stay home and safe and spend my tourist dollars in Canada with a lower rate of gun ownership, where I have a higher chance of dying from disease or a car accident than by a gun in the U.S.

Richard Phillips, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada