John Cole: The real gun analogy

The writer of the June 19 letter “The threat identified” used a flawed analogy to automobile deaths to support his position that we need not focus on guns. He ignored the fact that we have studied cars for decades to identify changes to make them safer while the CDC is prohibited from studying guns.

We don’t allow dangerous cars to be on our streets while weapons of war, which have no reason to be privately owned, are readily available.

We require cars and drivers to be tested repeatedly to ensure they can be registered and driven while we allow people who are insane to buy guns with no sanity check required.

We remove driving privileges for people who have violated our laws while a felon or a suspected terrorist can get a gun at a gun show with no background check.

The way our society responded to automobile deaths demonstrates the need for gun control.

This story was originally published June 20, 2016 at 4:54 PM with the headline "John Cole: The real gun analogy."