I was proud of the young women who spoke at the March for Our Lives rally. It’s good to see the youth of America energized. I do, however, have some difficulty with their message and the disinformation or lack of information that they have been exposed to regarding firearms.

Mass shootings are tragic and especially so in the school setting. However, the cold facts are that of the documented 49 mass shootings since Columbine, through 2016, only 13 used an Armalite-style assault rifle.

To attempt to ban a specific style of rifle to the hundreds of millions of law-abiding American citizens based on the actions of 13 disturbed individuals is disingenuous. Since 1993, gun murders in the U.S. have dropped by 37 percent, while private ownership of firearms has increased by several million.

These kinds of numbers tell me that the issue of school shootings and other mass shootings is a violence issue, not a firearms issue.

Despite the media hype, and the truly tragic effects of school shootings, they are still a rare occurrence. Our kids should feel safe in school. To get there, we need to address the violence issue.

Focusing on the device (guns) is like saying the car is at fault in a drunken driving fatality – someone has to pick up that firearm and turn it into a weapon. As a society, we need to start talking about and addressing the cause and not put all the focus on the symptom.

Tim Hunter

Mancos