Swiss hold the answer

Our nation was shocked when Adam Lanza killed 20 schoolchildren. Response was predictable. Now, many will advocate stricter gun control. Before jumping in that direction, consider Switzerland, in which every household has a firearm, yet in which firearms crimes are much less frequent than in the United States.

A person is 137 times more likely to be killed with a firearm in the U.S. than in Switzerland. I believe our country needs to look deeper, with experts in psychology and psychiatry taking the lead. Why is that so important? It seems that public hysteria trumps professionally qualified evaluations and conclusions.

For example, I can understand the public response to school shooting, but cannot understand the response to annual deaths of teenagers in automobile accidents. In 2010, about 2,700 teens in the United States aged 16 to 19 were killed, and almost 282,000 treated and released from emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes.

Where is the public outcry for those families who lose a child or children in car crashes? Does the public believe that those deaths are an unavoidable part of growing up?

Bob Launhardt

Pinehurst, Idaho