Doug Huffman
Banned
imported post
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=730809
GUNS
Freedom at stake
I am so tired of the debate over our constitutional right to bear arms. Aside from raising militias, the whole point of this right is to allow us to maintain some amount of personal freedom from the government itself. Take away our guns (of any kind), and basically we live in a totalitarian police state. We need guns to make sure that our government doesn't overstep its bounds.
Just like the drug issue, guns have become another way for our "representative" government to strip away our personal responsibilities. If you kill/rob/coerce/hurt somebody, you're a killer/thief/extortionist/sadist who needs to go to jail.
Protection should be given to those with the foresight and sense of duty to responsibly arm themselves against this crazy world. The District of Columbia case is an important one for the U.S. Supreme Court but one that should be an open-and-shut no-brainer.
Jerod Freitag
Milwaukee***
Ban treats symptoms
Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning the meaning of the Second Amendment.
The defense argued that the amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms for protection. The Washington, D.C., attorneys argued that it was a collective right to organize a militia and didn't have any effect on the need to ban handguns in an effort to reduce violence in a community.
The reality is the banning of any lethal weapon will do little to reduce violence. The factors that cause violence are complicated. They involve many economical, moral and social issues. Banning a device that is used to commit violence only treats the symptoms, not the underlying causes of the problem.
Dale Lamminen
Spring Valley***
Read founders' wordsThe March 18 article "High court to rule on gun ban" on the Supreme Court's case on the Second Amendment said it will be difficult to interpret what our founders truly meant because of the strange grammar used. This may or may not be true, but what is true is our Founding Fathers didn't just write the Constitution and leave it; they wrote volumes and volumes of books on all different issues to help guide the future citizens of the United States.
George Washington himself wrote more than 60 volumes of books covering issues from gun rights to abortion to freedom of speech and even gay rights. We collectively need to stop trying to make assumptions on what our founders thought and actually read their volume of writings to know what they meant throughout the Constitution.
This can be done easily by teaching our children about our founders and having them read their works, and I mean all the 55 founders, not the few we often teach. Our founders were brilliant men who devised a great Constitution and left us with thousands of pages of their own words to help us interpret it when issues arose, and it's time we start educating ourselves on them.
Joseph Gottardo
Milwaukee
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=730809
GUNS
Freedom at stake
I am so tired of the debate over our constitutional right to bear arms. Aside from raising militias, the whole point of this right is to allow us to maintain some amount of personal freedom from the government itself. Take away our guns (of any kind), and basically we live in a totalitarian police state. We need guns to make sure that our government doesn't overstep its bounds.
Just like the drug issue, guns have become another way for our "representative" government to strip away our personal responsibilities. If you kill/rob/coerce/hurt somebody, you're a killer/thief/extortionist/sadist who needs to go to jail.
Protection should be given to those with the foresight and sense of duty to responsibly arm themselves against this crazy world. The District of Columbia case is an important one for the U.S. Supreme Court but one that should be an open-and-shut no-brainer.
Jerod Freitag
Milwaukee***
Ban treats symptoms
Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning the meaning of the Second Amendment.
The defense argued that the amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms for protection. The Washington, D.C., attorneys argued that it was a collective right to organize a militia and didn't have any effect on the need to ban handguns in an effort to reduce violence in a community.
The reality is the banning of any lethal weapon will do little to reduce violence. The factors that cause violence are complicated. They involve many economical, moral and social issues. Banning a device that is used to commit violence only treats the symptoms, not the underlying causes of the problem.
Dale Lamminen
Spring Valley***
Read founders' wordsThe March 18 article "High court to rule on gun ban" on the Supreme Court's case on the Second Amendment said it will be difficult to interpret what our founders truly meant because of the strange grammar used. This may or may not be true, but what is true is our Founding Fathers didn't just write the Constitution and leave it; they wrote volumes and volumes of books on all different issues to help guide the future citizens of the United States.
George Washington himself wrote more than 60 volumes of books covering issues from gun rights to abortion to freedom of speech and even gay rights. We collectively need to stop trying to make assumptions on what our founders thought and actually read their volume of writings to know what they meant throughout the Constitution.
This can be done easily by teaching our children about our founders and having them read their works, and I mean all the 55 founders, not the few we often teach. Our founders were brilliant men who devised a great Constitution and left us with thousands of pages of their own words to help us interpret it when issues arose, and it's time we start educating ourselves on them.
Joseph Gottardo
Milwaukee