To the editor:

Let’s talk guns. First of all, the Second Amendment is irrelevant to what has been happening in the country today. Lawful gun owners will never have trouble buying any guns they want. The problem today is that the NRA and the gun industry have found an incredible sales ploy.

The most recent killing spree was by a large pistol that was legally purchased but with an illegal large capacity magazine. The one before that and others killed people with AR-15 rifles or copies. You want full-automatic? Cheap bump-stock — no problem!

Did you watch the “60 Minutes” episode Sunday? I knew the AR-15 and similar weapons were monstrously destructive. But to actually see the destruction they cause! No real hunter or any other civilian has any reason to buy a weapon that can liquidate huge amounts of tissue inside a living body with one bullet! There is no reason in this civilized nation why anyone should have these weapons. We all know the justifications/excuses. They are irrelevant! The only important point is that any gun-crazy child-man or any just plain crazy person has no problem obtaining any gun they want.

This can be stopped. The gun manufacturers and their toadies in the NRA have no right to pressure this country to allow crazies to carry and kill with military weapons. The Second Amendment has been oversold: The original Minutemen and colonial soldiers may have had one one-hundredth of the number of weapons that float around in this nation today. Each of them would have been pleased to have had one muzzle-loader with powder and he would have guarded it carefully. Their muzzle-loaders would not have gotten into the hands of the village crazy.

Stop the craziness!

Gus McClelland,

Lawrence