Letters to the Editor

• Gen Apathy

  [Read the article: Gun control or "hopes and prayers"?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  "Again, gun enthusiasts seem unable to recognize any argument to the contrary of either "all guns" or "no guns". I didn't even come close to advocating "no guns", I simply said that there is no legit reason for a citizen to own a semi-automatic."

  In a free society no person is obligated to defend or prove a need to engage in activity that does not directly endanger others. Rights either are inherent, and thus can only be limited by both a compelling reason, and in the least restrictive way possible, or they don't exist at all and are simply priveldges granted by an all powerful State.

  It's not up to an individual to offer a need to excerise a right.

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  "No one seems able to answer why people need such a weapon. It's just back to the black or white stance that you seem to think that if you can't own one type of gun then all your precious guns will be taken away."

  One, nobody has to answer a question you nor the State have no authority to ask.

  Two, firearm owners understand that semi-automatic weapons are not more inherently dangerous than other types of firearms. Your argument is based on the conclusion that they are. Any revolver, or even more dangerous, single shot shotgun is capable of the type of carnage witnessed at VA.

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  "We limit free speech to an extent. Yet we still have wide latitude with speech rights. We limit free religious expression to an extent, yet we have wide latitude to worship as we see fit. Yet for some reason, gun owners seem to think that any limit on any type of gun means that they lose all their rights."

  We do not ban categories of speech that do not directly endanger others. We can't yell fire in a theater because it endangers others. However, it that theater is empty, then there is no crime commited by yelling fire.

  Just because someone yelled fire in a crowded theater and people died does not mean the word fire is then criminalize, which is what you advocate.

  There are over 100 million semi-automatic firearms in the hands of civilians in the United States, a tiny fraction of these are used in a manner that harms or endangers others, yet you want to punish those who have committed no crime, nor taken any action to endanger others, because of what someone else did.

  I'm sorry, but that is fascist.

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  "And further, the argument you make (namely that if people don't own guns, then the government is fascist) is preposterous. The United States has a long way to fall before I start worrying about us becoming a military dictatorship. But this is how the gun lobby makes their argument. They take it to the unreasonable extreme and present it as a likelihood."

  Really, let's see, unreasonable search and seizure, a Federal government that believes it can arrest and hold people without trial or presentation of evidence, the application of the use of torture, just how far most rights be eroded before you begin to acknowledge a troubling trend?

  Permalink Tuesday, April 17, 2007 10:55 AM