U.S. shooting shocking, not surprising

Re 17 killed in Florida School Shooting, Feb. 15

What struck me this morning was that the news coverage in the aftermath of this unspeakable tragedy noted that this was the eighth-worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Imagine! There have been so many.

There are about 265 million guns in the U.S. That’s more than one gun for every adult in the entire country. The iron will of Americans turns to pudding when dealing with this issue.

The most common question asked in the immediacy following these incidents is, “How many times must this happen before something is done?”

This was the 18th school shooting of 2018. Eighteen, in only a month and a half. How many, indeed. Rob Cowan, Toronto

The most damning thing about this tragedy was how predictable it was to the students who knew this heavily armed expelled kid, turned gunman. The next most damning thing is Trump’s hypocritical statement that no American student or teacher should feel unsafe in a school, when his GOP (Gun Owners’ Party) won’t even ban bump stocks, and the AR-15 has become the school shooters’ favourite rifle.

Meanwhile, here in Canada, rapid-fire rifles and guns are still being treated as “collectibles,” and there are a million restricted and prohibited firearms in the hands of un-vetted men like farmer

Gerald Stanley. The ending of 14 female engineering students’ lives at L’École Polytechnique was the wake-up call that brought us our formerly tough gun laws.

It is urgent that Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale introduce new legislation to tighten our gun control, especially because we live right next to the lawless tribal regions to the south that are regularly terrorized by the misuse of weapons that ought to be restricted to use by the military and police. Ron Charach, Toronto

I’m perplexed by our southern neighbour’s love affair with the gun. I just don’t get it.

I’m happy to live in Toronto, a city the same size as Chicago where it’s difficult, but unfortunately not impossible, to get a gun, even if we wanted one.

Our murder total for all of 2017 was 61, and many of those were not even gunrelated. Timothy Phillips, Toronto