Second Amendment foes will happily twist, and shout

Dennis Hannick

Date published: 5/7/2006

Anyone who wishes to debate how our basic rights should be limited or otherwise controlled should first read the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights ["Register that computer, you subversive!" April 24].

From there, read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers.

Only then will you begin to be able to rationally debate the rights, without doing so from a position of historical ignorance.

The debates before the ratification of the Constitution and the many other writings of the Founders further clarify the thoughts and intents of those learned visionaries and will make critics' arguments issue from knowledge instead of inept conjecture and misinformed opinion.

The best of arguments against the Second Amendment involve exaggerated statistics and illiberal interpretations made from positions of willful ignorance by those opposed to armed self-defense.

When they fail to win the debate with their "logic" and their "truth," they resort to emotional diatribes and touting dishonest "studies."

Embarrassed disproof is the reward for this intemperate propaganda.

Those who want to infringe Americans' right of armed self-defense should have the honesty to advocate for the repeal of the Second Amendment, "instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it" (from a Thomas Jefferson letter).

Just remember New Orleans.

King George

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Date published: 5/7/2006