To the Editor:
In one column (May 1, 2014, The Catholic Messenger), Frank Wessling attacks or denigrates liberty, freedom, states’ rights, the Constitution, the NRA, the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court; who could top that?
The explicit sign at the door barring concealed carry is also an explicit invitation to evil people that their actions will likely go unchallenged. Do we have less of a right to protect ourselves and loved ones in a school, a restaurant, a court house, a military base?
The right of protection from others or a repressive government, to bear arms, is a natural law right that U.S. citizens are born with. The Second Amendment of the Constitution did not grant this right, it protects it! Thankfully former Justice Stevens cannot add lines to the constitution.
Mr. Wessling uses the word “fraud” in the last paragraph while mentioning 88 gun-related deaths a day in the U.S. Although that statistic may not be fraudulent, it is misleading. He would have us believing that those 88 people all died from violent murders committed with a gun. The truth is 60 percent of those deaths are gun suicides. Also, of the true gun homicides, 80 percent are gang related. If you eliminate suicide and gang deaths, the number is six a day. Sadly we cannot ignore suicide, but eliminating guns will not stop them, only change the method. As for gang gun deaths, maybe if those people were aggressively prosecuted on existing gun laws, that number would diminish. (Gun stats source was from U.S. Conservative Politics, “Putting Gun Death Statistics in Perspective,” by Dustin Hawkins.)
Don’t ask the millions of moral, law-abiding gun owners and carriers to give up their right to protect anywhere!
Myles Miller
Sigourney
