Bill of Rights protects everyone

Bill of Rights protects everyone

While it is true that Jared Lee Loughner purchased a gun and committed a horrible crime with it, the Second Amendment was not written to prevent or predict such acts. The Second Amendment was primarily written to protect the American people from an overbearing government that would desire to disarm its citizens. Our wise Founding Fathers knew that the government that they established could eventually become corrupted to the point where it wanted to decide everything for its citizens, take as much of their money from them as they could, and that the members of such government would attempt to exclude themselves from the laws it expects the citizens to follow. Modern examples of such corruption: the liberal left agenda, ridiculous taxation and the unwanted health-care bill, in that order.

The Second Amendment was also written in full realization that firearms can and will be used as tools for committing crimes. However, if citizens were not allowed to openly carry and keep guns, then only criminals and law enforcement will have them. That possibility would make criminals more brazen to commit crimes. It is well known that thieves are less likely to steal from a house or business that has a good security system. Likewise, criminals are less likely to commit crimes if they know that their would-be victims might be armed.

One of your readers suggested in a Jan. 16 letter that “criminal investigations, psychological evaluations and a minimal amount of training must become the prerequisites for the purchase of a gun.” While that sounds reasonable on the surface, the Second Amendment does not make such guidelines and it does so purposefully. To what degree of investigation, testing and training is considered fair and not biased toward mass exclusion of gun ownership? Again our wise Founding Fathers knew that establishing qualifications for bearing arms beyond just being a citizen would lead to more and more restrictions until virtually everyone is not permitted to have a gun. This is one of the reasons that the Bill of Rights is so absolute in its clarity. Owning a firearm as a free citizen is a legal right, plain and simple.

Our Founding Fathers devised the Bill of Rights to prevent our government from becoming like the (then) monarch dictatorship of England which they fought a war to break free from. The excuse that crimes are being committed as a reason to alter the Second Amendment does not follow proper logic or even critical thinking.

Michael E. Scott, Canfield