Re the letter titled “Don’t disarm the innocent” (CR, Jan. 10), restricting guns from law-abiding citizens (exclusive of the mentally ill) is an assault on our rights as Americans that cannot be tolerated.
Historically, the very first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired over the British trying to confiscate weapons from the colonists. Subsequent to the Revolutionary War, implicit in the debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, was the assumption that the federal government should not have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry. The Second Amendment was easily accepted because everyone agreed that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.
Thomas J. Zabetakis
Glen Burnie
Jan. 18, 2013