The writer of the letter to the editor in the April 10 edition of the Peninsula Daily News, in making his impassioned plea for changes to the Second Amendment, failed to emphasize the most important language in the amendment, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.”
Further, he failed to mention that a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (District of Columbia v. Heller) upheld the right of those who keep and bear arms.
He further states “that the right to own arms still has a purpose, home protection being paramount.”
However, what assures that that “right to own” has protection?
Those of us who are old enough to remember the abuses of power in the Clinton administration by former Attorney General Janet Reno — Waco, Texas; Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzalez — are not confident that those abuses could not recur, given the pure partisan atmosphere existing today in the U.S. Justice Department and elsewhere in our government.
At what point in our country’s history are we to depend on a well-regulated militia to protect us from our government?
Its track record is not enviable, is it?
Perhaps when addressing the Second Amendment for purposes of discussion, we should include the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits a state from denying any person of life, liberty, property without due process and provides equal protection under the law.
We should guard our rights under the Constitution with whatever means available to us, whether it be the Second Amendment, the First, or the Fourteenth.
Nedra Reed,
Forks