I want to try again to express my opposition to gun sales and purchases on Vashon Island. My first attempt (“Gun sales on Vashon a scary, bad idea for all” Jan.13) was a failure — as demonstrated by the reader responses in the Feb. 3 issue. I’ll try to be less cynical this time and more direct.

From 2001 to 2013, more than 400,000 people were shot and killed in the U.S. Over the same period, the entire U.S. military sustained less than 7,000 combat deaths in war. For every U.S. soldier shot and killed in war abroad, almost 60 civilians are shot and killed here at home. On an average day, about two American soldiers die overseas in the War on Terror, and 85 civilians die right here on American soil.

Vashon Island may be the least likely place in the world for a gun death, but the risk of spreading more guns around is far too great to ignore.

The Second Amendment gives us all the right to own guns. Congress passed it in 1791, at a time when everyone had had enough of being pushed around by British Redcoats and the typical gun was a long, unwieldy pipe that required about a minute of preparation to shoot one bullet. Today, the United Kingdom is our ally, and a gun is a light, easy-to-handle killing machine.

The U.S. has tens of thousands of civilian militia group members, many with passionate grievances that make them hate, and sometimes want to kill, other people whom they find intolerable. The “well-regulated militia” called for by the Second Amendment seems utterly unattainable.

Distributing more guns into the hands of civilians is wrong. By the end of this year, it’s virtually certain that more than 30,000 Americans will die at the hands of gun owners. Do gun sellers and purchasers have any responsibility? Which of these is more important, the right of every American to have a gun? Or the rights of 30,000 people a year to continue living instead of being shot to death?

— Mike Pankratz