Letter: Issue with guns is ease of killing

I keep seeing letters saying the nationwide shooting spree is due to mental illness. They usually include lots of stats about numbers of guns and numbers of suicides and lots of verbiage about rights and the like. The real cause is what is never mentioned, namely the simplicity of killing with a gun. It takes little effort, a trigger pull; little real training, beyond load, point and shoot; easy access, FOID card or FOID friend, theft or money. To kill a number of people via other means requires knowledge, practice, strength, skill and some degree of preparation and usually fewer actual deaths result.

I agree one has to a moral deficit to perpetrate mass murder, but Uvalde or Highland Park would not have been possible without an automated weapon. Contemplating either of them or others being done with a knife, a sword, a baseball bat or club is ludicrous.

Gerald Gagnon

Lake Zurich