One of the benefits of the internet is the ability to go back and re-read exchanges between folks in opinion pages. With a minimum of effort and thought, teaching moments materialize. Take the exchange between the writer from Hackensack and myself over the last few days. Please.
Not only the comparative verbiage, but the punctuation itself indicates where the "apoplexy" was displayed.
Only one of those pieces makes the claim that inanimate objects kill people. Only one offers false conclusions as to the value of "gun control." (The areas of America with the strictest gun control have the highest gun murder rates. The same is true worldwide.)
Only one claims the other writer hasn't read the Second Amendment. Only one mischaracterizes her own methods. Only one uses concocted terminology like "assault weapons." In plain English, all weapons are "assault weapons." Only one implies that, because of what the Amendment "doesn't say," we should all willingly ignore what it does:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
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"Militia," as the term meant at the time of the founding, and still does today, meant the people, not the military. The writings of the founders were far "clearer" than some emitting from Hackensack these days.
The Second Amendment is an anti-tyranny tool.
Tyrannies, for the benefit of my excitable friend from the north, universally seek to disarm the citizenry. Electorates who scream for abandoning the Constitution play right into tyranny's hands. All while shouting about how they are "sick of hearing" what amounts to the plain, simple truth.
Maybe they should try listening, instead of foolishly pontificating that the truth is "madness." Their consciences will thank them for it one day.
Guy Green
Brainerd
