Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409260021
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Just as I'm sure Robb will touch on his fair share of mudslinging that has nothing to do with the senatorial campaign, I'm confident that candidate Oliver North will take this statement out of context and blow it out of proportion.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not necessarily a fan of Chuck Robb. I just believe that the whole issue should be addressed and examined carefully by everyone before passing judgment on one statement.
Andrew C. Erickson
Christiansburg
Woe unto lawyers
Health reform? How about legal reform? Luke 12:46 , states "and he said woe unto you also ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers."
O.J. Simpson has a burden grievous to be borne, guilty or innocent. What burden does Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey and company bear? When it is all said and done, whatever the outcome, they will laugh all the way to the bank.
Now let us consider our grievous burdens to be borne. We can not work, eat, drink, play, own property, etc. without our various governments having their fingers in our pot. Every law and tax levied on us came from lawyers. Very few lawmakers are nonlawyers. Think about this, they can pass a law against anything they want to - anything! The bad part is they're doing it.
Gary K. Spence
Christiansburg
Fast tells untruth
There you go again, Steve Fast. Caught telling another untruth about our congressman, Rick Boucher. Fast says Rick Boucher doesn't support veterans and Rick Boucher comes right back and proves that he is the veterans' best friend in Washington. In 1993 Rick was awarded the Vietnam Veterans of America Legislator of the Year award because of his support for veterans' issues. Enough said?
Maybe in Ohio, where Fast comes from, throwing mud and misrepresenting your opponents accomplishments works - but not here. When Fast has lived around here longer, maybe he will learn that we value people who tell the truth. We stand up for our friends.
I'm proud to stand up for Rick Boucher because he fights for the Vietnam veteran.
James O'Connor
Vietnam Veteran
Honaker
Boucher really supports gun laws
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, continues to claim that he opposes gun laws, even while his campaign has become a cheerleader for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which enforces gun laws.
Boucher has supported statements by fellow Democrat state Sen. Jack Reasor of Bluefield in which Reasor repeats inflammatory bureau propaganda. Gun owners should realize that the purpose of this propaganda, so eagerly repeated by Boucher's friends, is to vilify gun owners to the point that any violence against them will be acceptable to the uninformed public.
The success of this propaganda campaign is demonstrated by the fact that no federal agents have been held responsible for provoking a gunfight at Waco - the Davidians' trial jury found that they were so provoked - and later crushing their home down around the heads of little children. Nor have they been held responsible for the murders of 14-year-old Sammy Weaver, shot in the back by a U.S. marshal, and his mother Vicki, shot in the head by an FBI sniper while she held her baby daughter.
I have always lived peacefully and productively. I challenge Boucher to find anyone who knows me who thinks justice or the community's safety is served by my persecution. In fact, the federal court itself has concluded that I am trustworthy and harmless, which is why I was released on the day of my arrest on a personal recognizance bond. The point was even raised in court that I have several guns at home. Nevertheless, Judge Conrad considered me so harmless that he sent me home to my rifles.
At the same time millions of informed Americans are justifiably terrified of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Boucher is looking on gleefully while one of his constituents is prosecuted by a bureaucracy that his colleague, Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan called a, "jack-booted bunch of fascists." And why wouldn't Boucher cheer them on if he thinks it is to his political advantage? That is, after all, the true purpose of gun control, to crush political dissent.
Republican challenger Steve Fast has properly stated that he takes his counsel with regards to gun rights from the Constitution. If that is so then he shouldn't have any trouble taking my side against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Constitution says that the right to keep arms shall not be infringed. Well, contrary to Mr. Reasor's inflammatory lies, the only charge the bureau has made against me is that I briefly held a rifle that didn't belong to me.
For this I have been taken from my house in chains, fingerprinted, photographed, am facing 10 years and a $250,000 fine, and my children's future has been compromised by the draining away of hard-earned savings for legal fees.
Prohibitive taxes, registration, the licensing of gun dealers and gun and ammunition manufacturers are infringements. Decades of compromise have put gun owners in an untenable situation. Licensing powers surrendered to the government have put it within their ability to cut off the future supply of ammunition practically overnight.
The gun lobby has taken a devil-take-the-hindmost attitude for most of this century. Now, with the passage of the crime bill, many gun owners are finally looking over their shoulders and seeing that there is no one left behind them. Some will not realize the sweeping nature of Clinton's gun and ammunition prohibitions until they too get the knock at the door and the chains put on them. Maybe more area gun owners should get involved now, while it is my life on the line instead of theirs.
The two 9th district congressional candidates are locked in a contest over who is more pro-gun. For gun owners truly interested in freedom, my case could separate the wheat from the chaff. Which candidate will press for congressional investigations of abuses and murders by federal agents? Which one believes that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be abolished, since its duties are beyond the proper limits of federal authority as described by the Second Amendment? Ninth district gun owners should be asking these questions.
William D. Stump II
Pulaski
Editors note: Federal authorities charged Stump on Aug. 4 with possessing firearms silencers. On Aug. 19, a federal grand jury indicted Stump and three other men for conspiracy to violate federal firearms laws.
by CNB