LETTER: Violent culture won’t be fixed by removing guns

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To the Editor:

One should not “spend” $500 million on gun control when the problem is behavior, whether one considers “control” a solution to a psychological problem or not. The video game proponents suggest that Pavlov’s dog conditioning is not applicable to their products, despite the fact that continual conditioning to violence with no consequences (after all, these games may be reset), will result in someone harming someone else, either with a gun, hammer, pitchfork, baseball bat, torture rack or knife.

I suggest lots of discussion with social scientists, psychiatrists and religious leaders take place before enacting any measures, either by decree or legislation. The short term solution of placing armed personnel inside schools defeats the principles of free and open education.

Tags: gun control, opinion, letters