On guns and gun control

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As religion has waned in the culture, various scientific and political fashions have become new faiths. These faiths create new sins, preach end-time warnings about death and destruction of the earth and make messianic promises. The founders of the United States understood passions and tyranny, so the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution as a bulwark to limit government. They understood that those striving for political authority would rarely have the welfare of the people as their first priority. Politicians adopt the passions of the moment to attain power.
 
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and religion. Cancel culture, university speech codes and the consolidation of social media and news outlets by national oligarchs have already curtailed free speech. Prayer has been banished from public schools. The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the people from the government and defend the First and other amendments. Other aspects of the Bill of Rights limit government seizure of property, provide for jury trials and reserve for the states or the people any powers not enumerated in the constitution. The founders knew an unarmed population could easily lose life, liberty and property as was demonstrated in the Holocaust.
 
We do not hear of mass shootings at hard targets like police stations, courtrooms or airports. You cannot even bring a pocketknife through a metal detector to enter Gillette Stadium. I doubt that any gun control measure will decrease mass shootings. Gun-free schools are attractive soft targets. While our Israeli contributor to Jewish Rhode Island (June 2022) attributed the absence of such shootings in Israel to strict rules about who may carry a gun, anybody who has been to Israel realizes that armed guards and security measures are pervasive. I have never shot a gun so do not have a personal stake in this. However, I am alarmed by the accretion of power by the government over our lives and the servile acceptance of the erosion of liberty in the name of social justice, climate justice, economic justice and other Utopian agendas. Think for yourself, do not accept political and media narratives as truth and do not easily surrender your rights.
 
Farrel I. Klein
Providence, R.I.
Farrel Klein, guns, letter to the editor