Second Amendment deserves same support as the FirstLetters to the Editor
Published March 16, 2005
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Re: Our gun laws are too lax, editorial, March 14.
It is truly amazing that the Times will defend the First Amendment rights of any group - communist, terrorist or otherwise - yet support the trampling of Second Amendment rights on a wholesale basis.
Rather than calling for our gun laws, which are already too strict, to be tightened so that anyone who is on a so-called terrorist watch list will be refused the right to legally purchase a handgun, the Times should be questioning why these U.S. citizens were placed on a watch list to begin with. Doesn't this have the taint of profiling?
Those citizens on the watch lists apparently haven't commited any felonies, or they would already be in jail. Why shouldn't they have the same rights as other law-abiding citizens? Given the number of letters that I've written to presidents, senators, members of Congress and others (including the Times), I'm probably on someone's watch list. That doesn't mean I've committed a crime, felony or otherwise.
Perhaps the Times can strengthen its case by listing the number of incidents in which known terrorists have killed someone by using a handgun in the past few years. I can't think of any in our area. And in the nearly three years I have lived locally, more citizens have died from being shot by local law enforcement than by terrorists.
Give us a break: Support the Second Amendment with as much fervor as you support the First Amendment. Without either of these, the other will disappear.
-- Larry Fox, Largo
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/16/Opinion/Second_Amendment_dese.shtml.
