On US gun control

Duncan Gilbey writes: Re. “What will happen with gun control under a Trump presidency?” (Tuesday)

The US could place a total ban all gun sales tomorrow and there would be no change to the number of shootings and massacres. There are over 200 million guns in private hands — some estimates state that there are more guns than people (over 300 million). Let those numbers sink in. Gun violence in America is endemic. It is not an issue that will be resolved by legislative or constitutional change. We have to face the fact that some problems don’t have a solution. This is one of them.

Just be glad you don’t live there.

On Spain’s place in European history

James Burke writes: Re. “On Catalonian independance”  (Tuesday)

Desmond Graham’s assertion that Spain was “the driver of European civilisation … in the expansion of Europe from 1599 onwards” is baffling. “1599 onwards” marks what historians describe as the “decline” (sometimes, “collapse”) of Spanish imperial power. A hundred years later, the Habsburg kings had inbred themselves to extinction. By then they’d lost Portugal, barely retained Catalonia, and been forced to accept the independence of their former Netherlands territories, having wrecked the Castilian economy by raising taxes to fight a series of losing wars.

Did Desmond mean 1499? That’d be more accurate, if a bit icky. Spain’s Golden Age wasn’t so golden for the millions of people it murdered.