Dear Editor:

In last week's edition there appeared two letters concerning gun control. In both those letters the authors referred to children being killed by firearms. School shootings and other mass killings are indeed a tragedy. As a teacher, news of them hits rather close to home. After each and every one there is a renewed call for things like “assault weapons” bans and magazine capacity limits. As tragic as these events are, they are the exception not the rule. Neither are they increasing on an epidemic scale. The incidence of these tragedies has remained rather static over the last 20 years but they are still used by gun control groups to push for more and more laws that by the experts own estimation will have no effect on these types of things.

The most dangerous place in America is not the inner city where gangs threaten innocent lives or in prison where hardened criminals prey on weaker ones and certainly not our nations schools. That place is in the womb of a mother who has been told it is fine to murder her baby. I would suggest that if Mr. Nehring and Mr. Rotondaro want to really save children then they look at abortion. While they are rightfully appalled at the children who are killed in events like Sandy Hook, I don’t see any fervent calls to stop the slaughter of over 4,383 babies every day in this country. That is the largest violence statistic in this country and many on their side of the gun control debate chose to ignore it.

How many more innocent unborn children need to be sacrificed on the altar of women’s reproductive rights before we end this slaughter?

Sarah Sample

Boothbay Harbor