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A number of letters to the editor concerning guns have been published recently. I thought I would add my view. There are currently about 400 million guns in private hands in the United States. Increasingly these are semi-automatic versions of military weapons. These guns are designed specifically to kill people and they are terrifyingly effective.

The second amendment is not absolute. Few of our constitutional rights are. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The U.S. government has limited the type of firearms citizens can own several times, starting in the 1930s with the ban on fully-automatic weapons. I would go further.

I like the Canadian system. No semiautomatic weapons of any kind. Legitimate hunting weapons like shotguns and bolt action rifles are fine, but all guns of any kind are registered. I would allow 6-shot revolvers because these are such a part of our national tradition. But no auto pistols and no magazine holding more than six cartridges. I have an old pump shotgun and a Ruger revolver. They have never failed me.

After a terrible mass shooting at a synagogue, New Zealand outlawed all semiautomatic weapons. They bought them back from their owners and that problem was solved in about two months.

To those who claim that they would die before giving up their guns, I say most are kidding themselves. If our laws change and the tactical police come to your house to take your assault rifle, it would be best to simply throw that foolish AR-15 out the window because these boys are shooters. They train for this every day. They wear body armor. You fire at them, and you die.

It will be decades before we have sane gun laws in this country, but it will happen. You can take that to the bank. Mass shootings are not our birthright as Americans.

James Winchester

La Conner