As we continue to feel sad about the deaths of the 3,000 people killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001, we need to be saddened as well by the deaths of more than 10 times that many individuals killed every year by gun violence in the United States.
Firearms kill more than 30,000 people every year in the U.S. In 2007, the latest figure available from the Centers for Disease Control, 31,224 people died from gun injuries.
As cartoonist Gary Trudeau pointed out in a February "Doonesbury" strip, since the terrorist attacks of 2001 some 270,000 Americans have been killed by gun violence. Most of these deaths were homicides, not accidents.
We are right to be sad and we are right to be angry about the deaths in 2001. But if those deaths are cause for anger, then what are we to do about the 30,000 annual deaths from domestic gun violence?
Elizabeth, Baltimore
