About the publisher: That’s what 400 million guns do. They shoot a 16-year-old who knocks on the wrong door. They kill a 20-year-old driving the wrong way.

We are involuntary participants in an experiment that went horribly wrong. The right-wing hypothesis is that the more weapons we have in our hands, the less danger we are in. It is not the mass murders that are killing us in record numbers. It is the drip, drip, drip of this style of shooting that has created a raging flood that is drowning us in blood.

We can’t see the forest for the guns that appear in people’s hands like an old man trying to take a life for no reason or reason. Or a man who fires two shots at a car pulling into his driveway because he has a gun on him.

We are a nation now trained to shoot first and ask questions later, with the core belief that we are always in imminent danger.

That’s all too close to a horrible truth when there are 400 million tools to scratch an itchy trigger finger.

Robert Nussbaum, Fort Lee, NJ

..

About the publisher: My god, what’s wrong with us?

A boy nearly dies when he rings the wrong doorbell. A cheerleader is shot for driving to the wrong car. A woman is killed because she drove into the wrong driveway.

And the National Rifle Assn. Convention is bigger than ever, also for children.

The soul of America is very sick and I am ashamed of this fear and ignorance. When do we turn this ship around?

Sandy Mishodek, Running Springs, California…

About the publisher: Looks like the chickens have come home to settle down. The GOP and NRA mantra is something like “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun”, blah blah blah.

The “good guys” are now killing teens for having the guts to knock on their door while black, driving the wrong way, or committing other heinous crimes.

This is the gun-drenched, fear-based society our Republican legislators designed. Good luck getting the genie back in the bottle.

Greg Hilfman, Topanga..

About the editor: I can hardly think of a sadder, more perfect example of the sunk cost fallacy than America’s steadfast investment in guns as a tool of public safety, even after death and the grief they have caused.

Can someone help me? Everyone?

Carl Matthies, Pasadena