Re: “UCD doctor’s research is a danger to the gun industry (Dan Morain, May 28): There’s already abundant evidence that guns in our homes and communities are much more likely to be used to kill innocent people than to protect them. The rate of gun deaths is 10 times higher in the United States than in other developed countries. The main reason for this vast difference is our weak gun control laws and the extraordinarily high number of guns in circulation.

In 1968, the late Sen. Thomas Dodd, D-Conn., called for the adoption of stringent gun control laws comparable to laws in place in other democratic countries. Since 1968, more U.S. civilians have died of gunshot wounds than all the U.S. soldiers in all the wars in which our country was ever involved. More research, in the absence of definitive gun control laws, will only document more senseless deaths. Bill Durston, MD