Ron Molen’s letter to the editor ("Gun deaths," Sept. 12) borrows rhetoric wholesale from anti-Second Amendment activists. The first clue is his use of the emotionally laden phrase "gun epidemic." There is in reality no such epidemic. The word epidemic implies an exponential increase in a disease, addiction, etc. But even as firearms ownership has skyrocketed, firearms homicides have plummeted — from 18,253 in 1993 (the highest year on record) to 9,616 in 2015, the latest year for which we have figures (homicides are likely to rise slightly in 2016, due to factors that have little to do with numbers of privately owned guns).

The second clue is Molen's figure of "30,000" annual gun deaths. This is intentionally misleading, as it inflates the homicide figures by throwing in the large number of suicides (more than 21,000 of the 30,000 cited) — a number that has also generally declined over the past quarter-century, and would be largely untouched by Molen's favored solution of "universal" background checks. According to a 2015 Pew study, gun deaths from all sources (including suicides) have declined 31 percent since 1993 — hardly an epidemic. Indeed, just the opposite.

Paul Smith

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Cedar City

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