Background checks a valuable step

This past Saturday, the Daily Herald posted a letter by Mike Sehr regarding keeping guns away from law abiding citizens. I respect his beliefs and passion on this subject, but I would like to correct him on a couple of points.

First, no one is talking about taking guns away from law abiding citizens. Sixty percent of gun sales today require background checks, and the vast majority of Americans, including gun owners favor them.

The problem for me is that 40 percent of gun sales, especially at gun shows and certain gun shops, are not required to do these checks. The question I have is who is buying these guns?

We know that cities like Chicago are experiencing gang violence where, too often, innocent people are being killed or injured. We also know that these gang members are getting their guns from places that do not require these checks.

Second, Sehr points out that more people in France have died from mass shootings than in the United States. What he neglects to mention, and he even shows it in his statistics, is that last year, over 30,000 American died from gun violence. For the first time in our history, there were more gun deaths than from car accidents.

By having universal background checks, this doesn't mean that there will be no more gun shootings, just fewer, as statistics have shown them to be effective. After the shootings at Sandy Hook, Connecticut passed restrictive gun laws and background checks, and gun violence has decreased by nearly 40 percent

Dean Starr

Libertyville