Tuesday letters
Guns and spending in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the day: Gun control by gun owners
After reading your editorial “Don’t let your gun turn up in a crime” (Feb. 10) in The Roanoke Times, I have thought a lot about the subject of gun control.
After the shooting in Newtown, Conn., I do believe that people need to make a few changes in how they should control their guns.
First off, anybody who owns a gun should lock it up or keep the firearm on him at all times in order to prevent the wrong people from obtaining these guns.
Also, I believe the government should not mess with our Second Amendment rights, but instead make stronger background checks on who has the ability to purchase them.
Also, I am not against the magazine limit that President Obama is trying to pass.
But if the government starts with taking away our magazines, then it is hard to tell what else it will try to take away regarding our Second Amendment.
L.S. BAILEY
MONETA
February 26, 2013 - 7:53 AM
When someone says “The sole purpose was so the people could protect themselves from the government because they knew and had seen how powerful and corrupt any government can become” I just have to wonder if they realize what they are saying.
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Do you really believe that the Founding Fathers had such little faith in what they created? If you do, why on earth would you or any sane person demand we adhere to that creation as our foundation 230plus years later? It literally does not compute.
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Either you have faith and trust in the Constitution, or you don’t. Claiming your guns are for “fighting tyranny”, especially given some folk’s bitter partisan version of “tyranny” is just plain laughable, and beyond sad.
The “Gun Control” debate was settled in 1791. What we need is criminal control.
It doesn’t matter who is in the White House; the Constitution has been breached and abused over the last several Presidents, and we should all be railing against that, irrespective of whether one supports the current President and his policies or not. I won’t argue with you that those who do so without being equally critical of his predecessor are as hypocritical; as those who support (and are blind to the excesses of) one over the other. But it doesn’t de-obligate us from being vigilant.
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Some have said that the Founding Fathers, when speaking of tyranny, were speaking of tyranny in the vein of those listed in the Declaration of Independence.
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Okay.
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First, how will strict gun control prevent abuses like those in the Declaration? Those abuses were at the hands of the British, whose first act upon sending troops to the colonies was to try to sieze all the firearms in the colonies (the redcoats were headed for the armories in Lexington and Concord). How, exactly, would banning ownership of firearms prevented that?
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Among the other excesses of King George III:
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he interfered with the representative process by rejecting legislation proposed by the colonies (the basis of states’ rights and federal nullification);
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he interfered with the representative process by dissolving colonial bodies of representation (the recognition of the states as sovereign entity and states’ rights);
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he interfered with the representative process by replacing colonial governments with his appointed ministers, and interfering with the naturalization of citizens in new regions (more states’ rights issues).
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How is this different from Abraham Lincoln’s suspending the Maryland legislature, suspending habeas corpus, imprisoning opposing journalists and legislators? How is it different from mandating from Washington that states and localities comply with federal laws or risk loss of funding? And how will gun control correct those abuses?
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King George interfered with the objective judicial processes and the civil rights of the colonists.
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How is this different from warrantless wiretaps, the PATRIOT Act, NDAA, spying with drones? And how will gun control correct those abuses?
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King George III further established tyrannical control by maintaining a strong military presence under his direct command; he maintained a standing army during a time of peace, made the military power superior to the civil government, and forced the colonists to support the military presence through increased taxes.
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Do I need to draw the parallels to today? If you feel the Founders were responding to these abuses, surely you feel that such are still abuses? And how will gun control correct those abuses?
Do you really believe that the Founding Fathers had such little faith in what they created? If you do, why on earth would you or any sane person demand we adhere to that creation as our foundation 230plus years later?
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The Founders knew that power corrupts, and that people are more inclined to devolved (as a society) than to evolve, so they recognized that even the government as they created it would be subject to the abuses of the power hungry and the complacent.
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So they established safeguards designed to guarantee the form of government, and added the Bill of Rights as the first 10 amendments to the constitution. Those were the safeguards, the inalienable rights of all man.
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Put differently, they trusted its survival a lot more after the adoption of the Bill of Rights than they did before.
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But you don’t have to believe anonymous bloggers, but you should listen to what the Founding Fathers said and wrote:
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All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. (James Madison)
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A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. (Madison)
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The rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are auxiliary precautions.
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Respect for its [the Constitution's] authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. (George Washington)
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It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. (Washington)
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If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. (Washington)
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