From Bob Erb
Monroe
To the editor:
It's time to move beyond "Guns don't kill people - people kill people," and have some serious dialogue about limiting the purchase and possession of firearms.
Our current laws, which allow individuals to buy and possess military-style assault weapons, huge caches of ammunition, and body armor - all in the name of individual freedom - do not work.
Most other developed countries have effectively addressed issues with guns and homicide. We have not. The American murder rate is 15 times that of other wealthy countries. To continue to wrap this issue in the Constitution is an insult to the framers of the document itself.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution reads: "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."
The intent of the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, known since their inception as The Bill of Rights, was to prevent abuses of power from the newly-created central government. The reign of the British colonial government - whose control of the courts, jails, press, and military served to staunch the growing discontent of the colonists - was fresh in the minds of our Founding Fathers as they gathered to lay the foundation for our young country.
The Bill of Rights was intended to address real acts suffered by real people in the years leading up to America's revolution. People suffered, died, and were denied their freedom and property by a foreign power well-accustomed to the effective use of intimidation across the globe.
In the more than 200 years since, we have become a nation defined by individual rights, and we are now the freest society on earth.
But the question I keep asking myself is this: if our Founding Fathers had foreseen the devastating effects of guns on our own people, would they have done what they did?
Would those men have supported a guarantee of individual rights so broad as to allow any common citizen to possess weapons capable of the mass killings of dozens of innocent people, women and children among them, in our churches, shopping malls, theaters and schools?
When would these men who gave birth to our nation have said, "Enough is enough," and embraced change for the common good?
Enough is enough. It's time to find a way to value our victims as much as we value our freedom.
Monroe
To the editor:
It's time to move beyond "Guns don't kill people - people kill people," and have some serious dialogue about limiting the purchase and possession of firearms.
Our current laws, which allow individuals to buy and possess military-style assault weapons, huge caches of ammunition, and body armor - all in the name of individual freedom - do not work.
Most other developed countries have effectively addressed issues with guns and homicide. We have not. The American murder rate is 15 times that of other wealthy countries. To continue to wrap this issue in the Constitution is an insult to the framers of the document itself.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution reads: "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."
The intent of the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, known since their inception as The Bill of Rights, was to prevent abuses of power from the newly-created central government. The reign of the British colonial government - whose control of the courts, jails, press, and military served to staunch the growing discontent of the colonists - was fresh in the minds of our Founding Fathers as they gathered to lay the foundation for our young country.
The Bill of Rights was intended to address real acts suffered by real people in the years leading up to America's revolution. People suffered, died, and were denied their freedom and property by a foreign power well-accustomed to the effective use of intimidation across the globe.
In the more than 200 years since, we have become a nation defined by individual rights, and we are now the freest society on earth.
But the question I keep asking myself is this: if our Founding Fathers had foreseen the devastating effects of guns on our own people, would they have done what they did?
Would those men have supported a guarantee of individual rights so broad as to allow any common citizen to possess weapons capable of the mass killings of dozens of innocent people, women and children among them, in our churches, shopping malls, theaters and schools?
When would these men who gave birth to our nation have said, "Enough is enough," and embraced change for the common good?
Enough is enough. It's time to find a way to value our victims as much as we value our freedom.
