Letter: Tighten our gun laws for safety

USA Today recently published an article on Germany's tight gun restrictions. Germany has one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths despite the high levels of gun ownership. Strict application processes reduced gun-related deaths to 57 last year, compared to 800 in 1995.

Now the stunner. The United States had 13,445 gun-related deaths in 2015 compared to Germany's 57. Given the population of the United States being four times greater than Germany, an extrapolation of the 57 deaths times four results in 228 deaths, to equate population numbers.

There is the notion in this country that one has the right to send out bullets which trumps the right of others not to receive them. Very few people successfully use guns to defend themselves from bad people anyway. A significant percentage of the woman who are murdered each year are killed by guns of intimate partners.

The Second Amendment has been taken to task by many including SCOTUS. Germany's success in reducing gun-related deaths is not copyrighted. We should feel free to follow their success.

John Carver

Decorah