photo By Boyd Loving
Reader Questions Bergen Record’s support for inappropriate and useless gun regulation
William A. Hoffman III,
April 10 ,2013
The Record’s support for inappropriate and useless gun regulation fell to a new low with Tuesday’s editorial page cartoon by Davies. I know he is not an editor and you did not draw the drivel, but you are en route to turning The Record into a mere blog.There are so many fallacies embodied in that scurrilous drawing it is hard to cram all the answers needed into the limited space I might be allowed. Let me answer a few:
1. The Constitution was written to limit government. We are free to express this and back it up with arms because the rights are unalienable, but several of the states wanted those rights enumerated lest they be forgotten or twisted, so the Bill of Rights was adopted. Now we see various attempts to have the Second Amendment infringed, and the excuses vary but the outcome is and is meant to be to so encumber the process of owning a gun that only criminals will do so because they don’t obey laws.
2. I don’t know what the “gun lobby” is. Perhaps there is an entry chamber where guns are stored? But my guess is the the NRA is being slimed with the implication that they support criminals or madmen, or worse, have been enablers of same. You have no basis for that implication – and you have made similar comments in your own written editorials – and should be ashamed. The NRA was founded to provide information on safe handling of weapons when the general teaching handed down from father to son was on the wane, and they have never promoted unsafe use, much less the kind of misuse you imply.3. If the kind of legislation being discussed – such as the draconian measures regarding background checks from father to son or husband to wife transfers in the Colorado law – do not seem to you to be nonsensical and useless, and designed for no other purpose than to begin the process of disarming citizens, consider that the foolishness imposed that way will mostly be ignored, but in so doing will create a new class of criminals: citizen gun owners. Perhaps they’ll be called “illegal gun owners” just in time to replace “illegal aliens” who are being rehabilitated into “undocumented immigrants”.4. A good case can be made that the collapse of societies arises from within and I happen to believe it. The idea that change itself is good, that the “old ways” are bad or foolish or outdated, is part of the rot that leads in that direction. Not every wish is appropriately a right, and not every wrong is a basis for washing away the foundation, even if it seems it’s only a little of the foundation.Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Attempts to avoid or prevent such tragedies as occurred at Sandy Hook should not be limited to re-runs of old ideas (take away the guns) that didn’t work then and won’t work now.
The Record should do more to promote alternatives that do not undermine the Foundation.
I am 100% for the right to bear arms.
Backgroud checks for people who want to buy portable devices capable of killing dozens of people within minutes are “draconian”? A background check on Adam Lanza’s Mom would have been nice, before she bought guns for an OBVIOUS headcase.
Unfortunately, not every gun owner is the model NRA member. All the legeslation aims to do is make that a little more likely. You want to live in an unregulated gun culture? Try Liberia.
Rob – blah, blah, blah. Your talking points are a bore and simply unfounded. Lanza’s mom did not buy guns for her son. People who belong to the NRA are not the problem, it is all the nuts running around who have civil rights and can not be instituted nor ‘turned in” by their shrinks.
As for most murders, they are with hand guns and committed by blacks and Hispanics killing other black and Hispanic young men. Your odds of dying in a car crash are far greater than being killed by a gun. Now there is a truly portable device capable of killing people within seconds.
Blaming the NRA for the CT massacre is like blaming AAA for drunk drivers. Its political posturing. How about something unique? Enforce the current gun laws and no plea bargain when a firearm is used in a violent crime. Problem solved.
#2, Adam Lanza’s Mom most certainly did facilitate her son’s posession of firearms. The rest of your post explains alot. You should have stopped at “blah, blah, blah”, white boy.
#3, who blamed the NRA? I didn’t. As for “no plea bargain when a firearm is used in a violent crime. Problem solved.” Problem solved except for the victim and the victim’s families.