Why so many guns in the first place?

The events at Newtown have resulted in a search for why it happened. All we have done is trot out our two favorite whipping boys: guns and mental illness. These are only symptoms of a far deeper problem. I have to ask a few questions that no one has come up with.

Why do we need so many guns in the first place? Our pioneer past required guns to provide food and for protection, As a boy my family had much more pheasants, rabbits and other game as there was little red meat or chickens available. Today, there is nowhere to hunt.

Mental illness is at an all-time high. A huge percentage suffer from clinical depression and other conditions. Those at the fringe commit heinous crimes and our prisons are filled to the brim with the largest confined population in the world, some one out of every 200 people.

The stress of our modern society bears down on us all. If you have a job and work 40 hours a week, you probably spend 20 hours traveling. The roads are filled to capacity and getting worse. Trying to make ends meet these days is a losing battle. We are overcrowded and our living conditions are oppressive. We still have the same brain as our stone age ancestors who rarely had more than 50 people in their clan. Now we are stacked on top of each other with little personal space.

Instead of blaming the symptoms, we should be searching for the cause to solve our problems.

Raleigh Sutton

Elgin