The Newtown, Conn., grade school shootings shocked the whole country. Senseless violence of this magnitude can only be perpetrated by the insane or the devil himself.

Now let’s take a good look at our own culture and society, which is the largest producer and distributor of weapons of war worldwide. That’s correct, we have had that dubious title for well over a half a century now. Those arms were responsible for over 100,000 deaths of innocent children in the ill-advised, immoral and futile war in Vietnam. The same arms manufacturers visited 100,000 deaths on innocent children in the illegal war on Iraq. We seem to have no conscience when it comes to killing massive amounts of innocent children overseas. We put on blinders for trade and profit, which is disgusting in itself, but when these same weapons of war take 20 of our own children to the cemetery we are appalled.

I agree weapons of war should be banned in this country. If they shouldn’t be distributed here and kept away from our own population, then they shouldn’t be sold overseas either.

Eventually we are going to be getting back what we have been distributing to the rest of the world for a long time now. Since 9-11 it seems the table of karma has been turning on us in this century. Yes, we have to take another look at the distribution of assault rifles worldwide or we are just purveyors of hollow hypocrisy.

Edward L. Barlow

Clayton

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