ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990                   TAG: 9007100426
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEFENDING FIRST BUT NOT SECOND AMENDMENT

YOUR DEFENSE of First Amendment rights in the June 12-13 editorials on flag-burning and 2 Live Crew issues was a commendable, coolly reasoned response to those who would attempt the picemeal dismantling of our Constitution. Unfortunately, you destroy your credibility and make a mockery of defending our Constitution in arguments involving amendments other than the First.

You claim, "Trashing the First Amendent" is wrong and say: If we make exceptions to amendments, where will the exceptions end? If these statements are valid for the First Amendment, reason says they are valid for all. Your high-minded nobility pales rapidly, however, when it comes to the Second Amendment.

Your parade of editorials concerning the Second Amendment does a mental flip-flop. You maintain that if a firearm is arbitrarily and erroneously labeled "assault," then ignore our Second Amendment and ban it. If a firearm does not bear a label "for sporting purposes only," for "target practice only" or "for collection only," ignore the amendment and outlaw it.

Apparently, your opinion of our Constitution is of the pick-and-choose variety. If it "grinds your ax," support it; if it doesn't, then in your words of June 13, "carve out an exception."

If is both frustrating and frightening to see such hypocrisy and irresponsibility in an issue as vital as the integrity of our Constitution. As long as you advocate surrendering our Second Amendment rights, don't complain about losing our First Amendment rights - or any others. Without these two amendments intact, our freedom is history.

It is ironic that at this time, citizens in Asia and Eastern Europe are fighting and dying for the very freedoms you seem willing to give away.

\ ROBERT L. PRICE\ NEW CASTLE 


 by CNB