OPINION:
Federal and some state government officials have decided to use the Sandy Hook Elementary School atrocity as an excuse to attack and eviscerate the Second Amendment. I have yet to hear any news reporter challenge these leaders on their misleading statements. In fact, many seem to do just the opposite. Bob Schieffer of CBS News even went so far recently as to liken President Obama’s confrontation with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to our nation’s fight against Nazism.
The Founding Fathers did not view hunting, sport shooting or even protection against violent criminal activity to be so important as to make them sacrosanct in the Bill of Rights. Rather, the Second Amendment as written was meant to give the individual citizen and his local community the “teeth” to protect First Amendment rights against a tyrannical government.
In order to achieve this goal, citizens should be armed with at least basic military side and long arms, should keep them within their homes and should have them accessible in a moment’s notice in order to keep tyranny at bay. Our schools used to teach the virtues of the Revolutionary War’s Minutemen, armed citizens who rushed from their homes to confront their oppressors’ troops in the fields and streets. Semi-automatic weapons such as Baretta M-9 handguns and AR-15 rifles, and their standard 15-30 round magazines, should be accessible to citizens of good standing.
President Obama, with the near full support of the mainstream media, has announced a “campaign-style action” to fight groups such as the NRA with the intent of gutting the Second Amendment. Citizens who love freedom should support the NRA and related civil rights organizations. Americans should contact their elected representatives and media and let them know freedom isn’t free.
MAJ. GREG SHEEHAN
U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
Altoona, Pa.
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