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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 19, 1991                   TAG: 9104190694
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STEVEN R. VAUGHAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`CONTROLLED' FREEDOMS AREN'T WANTED

THANK YOU very much for your editorial April 12 regarding the Brady Bill. In attempting to defend the concept of gun control in any degree whatsoever, you gave the only valid reason for absolutely refusing such efforts. You ended the piece: "But if enacted, and if [the Brady Bill] survives a threatened presidential veto, it could be a framework for later, more effective restrictions."

Through this editorial, your paper had the courage to acknowledge how people are gradually deceived into relinquishing individual liberty and freedoms. Persuade people to accept a reasonable idea (such as the Brady Bill), then expand it later, gradually, in degrees, until the freedom exists no more. It's the bromide, "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile." And we all know who the "they" is, don't we?

It's ironic that in another editorial in the same edition, you berated congressmen for taking advantage of "a so-called grandfather clause" that allows them to keep leftover campaign funds. You disdain what you called "elected officials' greed."

Why don't you hold similar hostility for our leaders' "greed" in trying to take away individual liberties, including not only the gun thing, but other matters such as the recent expansion of the seat-belt law and the growing restrictions under which people who smoke must live? You want me to trust a government that, under the threat of a fine, forces me to buckle my child in my car when "they" will transport her to school on a bus (paid for with my tax money) that isn't even equipped with seat belts?

So let's cut to the chase. It's not about saving lives through gun control, any more than is the seat-belt law about saving lives. Neither is this anti-smoking paranoia about people's health. If it was, "they" would simply shut the firearms and tobacco industries down and install seat belts on school buses.

But these "solutions" are too obvious, aren't they? And too costly, not only in terms of expense (as with seat belts on school buses), but of the jobs lost if the tobacco and firearms industries were closed.

And that's the real issue here - money.

So save the emotional and intellectual debate and approach this issue like all the others. Raise the costs of firearms a few hundred percent so only the extremely rich can afford them (as well as those willing to steal and rob to obtain them - yes, I can really see gun control solving the problem now). But don't, under any circumstances, ask me to accept any more "controlled" freedoms.

A "conditional" freedom is a contradiction in terms, the end result of which is no freedom at all. And so far, the National Rifle Association apparently is the only group of Americans left who are wise enough to see this (or at least brave enough to act on it).

Except for the Roanoke Times & World-News. After all, no self-respecting journalist is going to except a "conditional" First Amendment, right?

\ AUTHOR NOTE: Steven R. Vaughan lives in Vinton and is a lab technician for a company that makes custom orthotics.

by CNB