Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302150297
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CAN'T MEDIA READ BILL OF RIGHTS?
YOUR FEB. 4 editorial, "The cost of being tough on crime," effectively drew the boundaries of the opposing arguments regarding His Excellency's one-a-month "gun control" bill. You noted, "Rather than do something to prevent gun-related violence, the NRA prefers to catch the culprits after the fact and throw them in the slammer."Your side proposes to prevent gun-related violence:
By the abrogation of due process. Anyone wishing to purchase more than one handgun a month is presumed guilty of future criminal acts.
With the selective "repeal" of God-given natural rights and the purposeful blurring of these rights as simple privileges.
By the ex post facto establishment of a new class of criminals, law-abiding gun-owners, based solely on their possession of arbitrarily "banned" firearms.
With Gestapo-style raids on the homes of honest citizens who dare to resist your totalitarian "preventative" edicts.
Through initiating a media "cultural cleansing" of people who safely and conscientiously enjoy firearms because they choose to be "politically incorrect."
Your industry aids this effort with sophistic arguments, outright lies about "cop-killer" bullets and "assault pistols," and syllogistic inferences that anyone who disagrees is racist, genocidal, idiotic, paranoid, irresponsible, unpatriotic or at best incapable of reasoning beyond a troglodytic level.
Yet if we propose to prevent gun-related violence by modestly suggesting firearms-safety training in public schools, or offer reasonable proofs that the Second Amendment, like the First, is an individual right, you recoil as Dracula before the crucifix. Well, here's a bucket of holy water: Firearms training should be mandatory for high-school graduation; firearms ownership should be required for all households; and firearms registration should be eliminated.
I believe that we are presumed innocent until proven guilty, that individuals, not weapons, are responsible for criminal actions and are, therefore, liable for the punishments exacted. Further, that free will and liberty, and our individual responsibility for them, formed the basis of the philosophy of the founding fathers, not elitist mandates or capricious government "safety" measures.
At these basic conceptional levels, one of us has to be wrong. I challenge you - and His Excellency, for that matter - to read the Bill of Rights and say, straight-faced, that it is me. PATRICK L. AULTICE ROANOKE