Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde revisited

To the editor:
    In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson published ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Since then, debates have raged as to whether Stevenson was speaking to the decay of society as a whole or to the duality of man’s soul. Life in today’s America has rendered such debates moot. We are frightened country with nerves frayed to the point of shooting teenagers for loud music. We feel helpless to protect our loved ones and immediately fall into the Cold War trap of weapons escalation.
    It is being suggested that practically everyone should be armed because all those we deem “normal” will never succumb to the fear and human frailties that drive the “bad” people. This, I believe is what Stevenson was trying to say: Anyone of us all can be Mr. Hyde on any given day and as such are all just a moment away from doing the unthinkable. Mr. gun dealer, you might sell that “Bushmaster” to the good doctor and find out on CNN that after a couple drinks, he became Mr. Hyde.
    I do not want to take away the gun from Dr. Jekyll, I just want Mr. Hyde to have time to listen to the better half of his angels before we hear those words again — “He was such a good boy; kept to himself and did not seem to have a mean bone in his body.”
David Daniel Beckom
Mars Hill