text: The cartoon header of this editorial sums up the problem and I doubt that the writers ever thought about it. In the cartoon, everybody is angry, depressed or discouraged. This is the real issue, weapons are a symptom. Yes too many people are being killed no doubt about it. Remove firearms and our violent death rate will go down, but only by a few percentage points. With the attitude of people here in the US, something else has to happen. Despite what we might like to think, we are a downtrodden society compared to our parents, earnings are smaller, nobody sees a future other than dystopian, life is not “good.” When we address these issues, we could have all the firearms we want, and there would be less violent deaths. Let us not attack the symptom, let us attack the disease and cause.