LETTER: We have the right to defend ourselves

To the Editor:

Emperor Oh-Bah-Mah was in town this week. He made it clear that he was willing to sacrifice as many children and unarmed citizens as necessary to achieve his agenda of disarming America.

Never mind the propaganda photo on the cover of U.S.A. Today of him purportedly shooting skeet at Camp David. Only a novice or someone set up for a photo would mount a shotgun with the heel of the stock resting on his collarbone. I suggest a round of skeet would be painful and Oh-Bah-Mah’s score would be greatly less than his golf score, but I digress.

Charles C.W. Cooke published an article in Feb. 11’s issue of National Review. In it he brings up several good points never, in my experience, having been aired before.

Cooke reaches into history and provides us with the most interesting and ironic of ideas. He reaches back to Justice Taney and the Dred Scott decision where Justice Taney reasons that freed black slaves under the constitution would be able to “keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Free men who are masters of their government have that right but slaves and subjects do not. It begs the question: Is Oh-bah-mah a closet racist then?

Cooke goes on to point out that some of the first gun control legislation (the Gun Control Act of 1968) was a thinly veiled attempt to disarm black people.

Cooke refers back to John Locke who contended that “we are possessed of the inalienable right to own our bodies.” Where do we hear from the left this thing about owning our own bodies today? Think abortion and the feminist movement.

While the feminists contend they own their bodies and it gives them the right to kill their unborn, Locke contends that since “one controls one’s body and may defend it.” Hence the second amendment and the “right to bear arms; you can’t defend yourself with parchment” especially a parchment Oh-Bah-Mah is doing his level best to shred and ignore. I’m bettin’ those teachers and administrators in Sandy Hook were wishing they had something to defend themselves with beside spitballs.

I like Cooke’s argument over “assault” weapons: The banners ask, “Why do you need an AR15?” Locke’s answer: “Why don’t you want me to have one?” My personal contention is that liberty can be more reliably entrusted to an armed citizenry than to a band of scurrilous politicians.

Jim Schroeder

New Richmond

Tags: letters to the editor, opinion