Editor:
I am happy to provide a fact-based response to Denton Mays Aug. 21 letter to the editor, titled Reasonable gun control is long overdue.
Mr. May accuses advocates for unrestricted gun ownership, including assault weapons, of presuming to know the intentions of the founders. Then in the next two sentences, Mr. May himself presumes to know the founders intentions by claiming (V)ery likely, they would have limited the use of such weapons to the military.
The founders original intentions are well known and their actual intentions prove Mr. Mays assertion is wrong. For example, Thomas Jefferson wrote, Laws that forbid the carrying of arms
disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes
. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. Jefferson believed that the civilians right to bear arms would reduce crime and deter murder.
Likewise, Patrick Henry said, The great object is that every man be armed. Thomas Paine wrote, [A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world as well as property.
Mr. May also accuses gun advocates of dismissing the first four words of the Second Amendment, which read (A) well regulated militia. Apparently, Mr. May does not know that the United States Supreme Court dismissed the words a well regulated militia by ruling in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case that the Second Amendment does, in fact, protect civilians right to possess firearms unconnected with service in a militia. The Court stated that the right to bear arms does not require membership in a militia.
When the facts are examined, both the founding fathers of our great nation and the United Supreme Court favor the right of all civilians to keep and bear arms as written in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Karl M. Woods
Dalhart, Texas
Via CortezJournal.com