There are numerous absurdities to be found in recent gun letters by local conservatives. Take the insistence that AR-15s are not assault rifles. That’s a minor technicality. A semi-auto fires bullets as fast as one can pull a trigger, which unless one has arthritis, is pretty fast. Fast enough to kill a roomful of kids at Sandy Hook or Uvalde. Military assault rifles have two settings — semi- and full-automatic. Soldiers are trained to use full-auto only when suppressing fire is called for and you want the enemy to keep his head down, while your guys seek better firing positions. Semi-automatic fire is for shooting individual targets—sometimes multiple targets in short order. Both work just fine at killing.

Enough with the meaningless debate about angels dancing on the head of a pin. Let’s turn to another letter where the author compares schools to zoos and teachers to zoo keepers. The writer ignores numerous facts, such as the U.S. has more weapons than people and more weapons per capita than any other country in the world, save Yemen, which is embroiled in a decades-long civil war.

The author also ignores the fact that for mass killers, the AR-15 is the go-to gun of choice. Whether it is semi-auto or has been tweaked into full-auto mode is irrelevant. The AR-15 can kill a lot of people in a short amount of time. Mass killings are not commonly associated with hammers, knives, clubs, muskets, hunting rifles or six-shot revolvers.

Mass killings are commonly associated with high-capacity, rapid-fire guns, whether they are in semi- or full-auto mode.

That’s why the AR-15 and its ubiquity and ease of access is such a deadly problem. The problem is not school doors or building design. It is not mental illness or violent video games or shows on TV. Great Britain, Canada and Australia do not have mass killings like we do, yet their school buildings are not that different and their kids play video games like ours do. Key difference? No semi-autos allowed in countries just as free as us. Maybe freer, because they don’t worry about mass murder.

Republicans want to divert your attention from the real problem: too many guns and too much firepower. It really is that simple.

Brodie Farquhar

Hayden