School shootings

Editor -- Yet another mass killing at an American school ("Minnesota student's rampage kills 10," March 23).

These acts of mindless carnage are becoming almost as much a part of the annual calendar in your gun-obsessed country as the Super Bowl, the St. Patrick's Day Parade and Thanksgiving.

Surely it's time for the gun lobby and its supporters (led by celebrities such as Charlton Heston) to ask themselves what is more important: their right to bear arms or the right of children to survive their schooldays.

Just how many more of your sons and daughters will have to die in a hail of bullets before the macho-morons of the gun lobby come to their senses?

ROBERT READMAN

Bournemouth, Dorset

England

(San Francisco Chronicle, 3/23/05)