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To the editor:
This letter is in response to Mr. Spahr's letter that appeared in The Sentinel on Aug. 11. Mr. Spahr asserts that the main topic of my letter was the hypocrisy laden policy of the left being "Gun deaths bad -- vacuum abortions good."
No one on the left, including myself, thinks that abortion is good. I do think that decisions about a woman's body should be between a woman and her doctor and not the government. He goes on to demonstrate his lack of knowledge by stating that progressives are not "able to correlate between common sense and statistics."
Correlation is a statistical term indicating interdependence between two variables. There is no such thing as a correlation between a common sense belief and correlation.
To refute the fact that none of seventy other countries that allow abortion have the number of mass killings that we do, Mr. Spahr demonstrates his ethnocentricity by pointing out minor cultural differences between other developed countries and the United States. Absolutely none of these minor cultural differences have anything to do with the number of mass killings in a country.
He goes on to point out that "we are a country formed by violence and violence has remained ... part of our culture." I'd like to point out to Mr. Spahr that our country is not alone in being born in violence. Mr. Spahr should take some time to learn about the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, the Indian Independence Movement, the Chinese civil war, or the English Revolution. Being born in violence does not mean we have to live with violence.
Mr. Spahr has repeatedly asserted that mass killings are a mental health problem stating that "no one in their right mind shoots people by the score." Once again his simple common sense solution is simply wrong. Most mass killings are the result of a grievance or hatred, neither of which is a mental illness. Very few mass killings are the result of mental illness. There is no evidence that the largest mass killing in U.S. history was the result of mental illness.
I would also like to point out that legalized abortion began in the U.S. in 1973 and mass killings did not substantially increase for thirty-odd years after that. However, the numbers of mass killings have significantly increased since the assault weapons ban was lifted in 2004.
Mr. Spahr loves to accuse those on the left of spin but his letter was little more than spin. The fact remains that there is a real and direct correlation between the number of assault type weapons with large capacity magazines in our society and the number of mass killing, and there is no correlation between abortion and mass killings.
Harry M. Geedey
Lewistown