LETTER: Turning U.S. into armed state is wrong response to terrorism

Contrary to Eric Knutson’s op-ed in the Dec. 20 Inter Lake, the Second Amendment is not a justification for becoming vigilantes. Knutson wrote:

“…it may be in order to arm yourself on an everyday basis, and also maybe start appointing designated gun-toters, or a small group of them, for any group functions. It seems we need to take matters into our own hands, because the police and sheriff’s deputies can’t be everywhere at once. They do a masterful job, but they’re limited, and to blindly trust in deputized law enforcement as our only line of defense is absurd, and calling them the first line of defense is questionable as long as we have the Second Amendment right to defend ourselves.”

A civil society exists when an unarmed husband and wife can push their baby stroller through their neighborhood or a public park without worrying they will be harmed. And with some exceptions, that’s the norm in the Flathead, Montana and the rest of the country. But a civil society disappears when everyone lives in constant fear, carries a weapon, and takes the law into his own hands.

The worst thing we can do to protect ourselves from the vanishing small threat of Islamic terrorism is to organize ourselves into pistol packing, self-appointed posses in the irrational belief that murderous Muslims lurk behind every bush.

What Knutson proposes — living in fear, armed to the teeth, thinking shoot first and sort out the bodies later — is exactly what the terrorists want us to do to ourselves. —James Conner, Kalispell