Nicholas Kristof’s column in The Seattle Times drew ridiculous analogies between automobile regulation and gun regulation [“Our blind spot about guns,” Opinion, Aug. 2].

Of 30,000-plus deaths each year caused by automobiles, few can be classified as intentional. Moreover, there are no features of automobiles that are intended to cause death.

Conversely, discussions of cartridges and the ballistics of bullets are often centered on what can be most simply described as “stopping power.” Leaving aside accidental and justifiable self-defense gunshot deaths, the remaining gunshot deaths each year are actually intentional (murders and suicides).

Kristof’s attempt to equate an ability to reduce unintentional automobile deaths to a similar ability to reduce intentional deaths (whether or not by firearm) is ludicrous on its face.

Tim Eaves, Issaquah