To the editor:

Guns are designed for one thing: to kill.

Yes, there is a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the Constitution, but in recent decades lobbyists have convinced legislators that it should run roughshod over our other rights, resulting in loss of life (11,078 U.S. gun murders in 2010), liberty (Aurora movie theatre and Portland shopping mall mass shootings) and freedom of religion (Wisconsin Sikh temple massacre). Guns are designed to kill and even those owned by law-abiding citizens can be stolen and become instruments of tragedy.

A gun shop has no place next to a community college, the case with the arms store to open at Kens Korner Mall, 200 feet from Skagit Valley College. High school-age students in the Running Start program attend this campus as well as young adults. The merchants were not polled by the property owner, Mr. William Dusenberg of Saratoga Northwest, Inc. in Bellevue, prior to the rental arrangement. He did not ask them several years ago, either, when one of the merchants began renting and selling pornographic videos. Community action stopped the videos; this time it’s much more serious.

The Sandy Hook bloodbath lives on just below most people’s consciousness and conscience. How have we allowed our nation to become the most violent of the civilized countries?

Does the community really want a weapons store next to our college?

I, for one, would be very uncomfortable shopping at Ken’s Korner with a gun store there. As a patron of many of the mall’s stores for years, my choice appears to be to stop shopping there, thus removing my support of some of our great local businesses. Mr. Dusenberg is an absentee landlord, apparently out of touch with his tenants, a number of whom are dismayed by this development, and he is out of touch with community standards and concerns.

Sue Ellen White

Langley