Why is it that only in the United States children are gunned down in schools regularly? Other developed nations unencumbered with Old West frontier history romanticism have kept their citizenry unarmed, thus free of the gun slaughter we seem to tolerate as “normal” as we periodically bury our kids and others shot down by outliers, some criminal, some terrorists, some simply “off,” some genuine lunatics. Thus we are hostages to the romanticism of our own history, ignoring common sense.

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Those who keep track say every fifth Cook County Jail inmate is a mental case, which gives some idea of society’s exposure to the unstable among us able to get a gun almost at will.

We outlawed “Tommy” guns in 1934 during Prohibition. We could likewise outlaw other guns if Congress, pressured sufficiently by voters, would re-write the Second Amendment accordingly for ratification by the states. All other attempts are half-measures doomed to fail.

However long it might take to cleanse the nation of guns matters less than simply getting the process started, with extreme penalties for holdouts who don’t surrender them.

Draconian? Yes. But anything shy of that is delusional, and leaves us all easy targets for the next gunman. Call it American Roulette.

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park

Troubling question

A sign appeared yesterday morning on the front of an Anglican church in Australia — not a radical church, just your average urban Anglican parish church.

It had on it one question: When will they love their kids more than their guns?

Lee Knohl, Evanston

It’s the guns

Dear Mona Charen: It’s the guns, stupid!

Tony Galati, Lemont

Russia is not our friend

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Americans both remembered the horror of that day and mobilized at every level to both recover and push back against our enemies. We understood that such terrorists were an existential threat.

Now, in the aftermath of the established Russian cyber attacks designed to divide Americans and to tip the election in President Donald Trump’s favor, we are once more looking to our leaders for recovery and push back. If President Trump refuses or is unable for some reason to provide that leadership, then others must fill that vacuum. Russia is not our friend — Russia is an enemy bent on destabilizing our country and weakening our position among nations.

Mary F. Warren, Wheaton