LETTER: Gun control would encourage crime and hamper liberty

Gary Vinson (Sept. 6 letter) thinks more gun control is the answer to our country’s descent into degeneracy. He’s fallen for the siren call of those who would have us legislated into slavery. His reasoning, such as it is, advocates the abolition of the balance of fear that keeps government from becoming that which our founders strived to prevent.

Is there a person, who knows the history of the world, who honestly doubts what would happen if our citizenry were to be deprived of its ability to resist uninhibited government?

Those who advocate gun control insist they don’t want to curtail our rights, but only to protect us from those who are mentally unstable or criminal. Yet, they offer no solution to treat, incarcerate, or otherwise inhibit, those who fall into those categories. Their one and only solution is to curtail gun ownership for all. Even, or especially, for those with neither of those traits.

Even if appropriate legislative bodies could draft a perfect law to address the mental and criminal problems: What’s to keep some black-robed wannabe tyrant from changing it to suit his, or her, pet perception of what should have been written? Recent judicial history is not encouraging.

Will there be further losses of loved ones? Yes. Will there be more families who grieve the loss of a loved one? Yes. But many will be saved because a good guy with a gun prevented the death of a loved one. There will be families who celebrate the saving of a loved one. Even up? Probably not.

If the citizenry is deprived of the means to protect their own lives from those who mean them harm, and from the government oppression which will surely follow, our republic will die. All the sacrifices of those who have gone before will have been in vain. And. Ben Franklin will look on from the grave and curse us. —Ron Wheeler, Kalispell