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To the editor:
This letter is in response to the editorial of July 1 entitled "Second Amendment is all that is needed for law-abiding citizens to have a gun."
The United States has 120.5 guns per 100 people, or about 393,347,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). America's pervasive gun culture stems in part from, but not limited to, its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment, which states: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, slaves, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of guns and gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.
It's been said that Satan can quote scripture for his own purpose; turns out he can do the same thing with the 2nd amendment. He can also choose whomever he pleases to enact his evil scheme. Prior to the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" as interpreted by gun idolaters, the money worshiping gun manufacturers, the Supreme Court of the United States and Lewistown Sentinel editorial writers did not exist and does not exist today but for their select reading of the Second Amendment.
In fact, the prefatory, that is to say the first clause directly contradicts the afore mentioned parochial interpretation of the operative, or second clause of the Second Amendment.
The plethora of early gun laws not only establish but also validate the argument that gun rules and gun rights are by no means at odds. The common notions that gun laws are largely a function of modern, industrial (or postindustrial) America, that gun laws are incompatible with American history and its practices or values, and that gun laws fundamentally collide with American legal traditions or individual rights, are all patently false.
Clark Wagner
Milroy