To the editor:

With regard to the person(s) who, in the course of exercising his or her highly touted Second Amendment right to blow things up, shot two canine members of two island families (“Dog shot in Freeland; Similar case also reported near Clinton,” Aug. 16 edition),

I have again had to revisit that great irony Americans eagerly cultivate with their beloved firearms: It’s not guns that cause things like this, it’s America’s long-standing national gun fetish.

Guns are not adjudicators, despite what Hollywood Westerns and those diehard Manifest Destiny-sorts might wish to have us think. My guns are simply tools, not unlike my drill press, yet I see no need to join any National Drill Press (or Rifle) Association.

We do seem to have lost the trail somewhere, folks.

Kirk Francis

Langley