Not All Things Change
The following is an Editorial Opinion I sent to the Tri-City Herald in 1986, and it is as appropo today as it was in 1986, and as appropriate as it would have been in 1964, because not all things change and the left’s hatred of our Constitution is as relevant today as then!
“Herald downplaying threat to Second Amendment rights” was the title:
“For months we have been barraged by articles and editorials from in the Herald calling for more gun control. These editorials have never given any facts or statistics to back up the gun-grabbers’ fetish for disarming honest gun owners. That’’s because the facts go against them and always will. Gun owners aren’t even part of the crime problem.
How would the Herald react to legislation directed against the ‘Fourth Estate’? Let’s create a scenario: H.R. -22 and S.R. -22 would call for all news stories to be cleared through the Regional News Office for content and opinion: the ‘waiting period’ would not exceed 14 days, unless the government deems the article ‘not in the public interest’. The NRA (Nat’l Writers Association) and other pro-news organizations have gone on record opposing the legislation. This has put them under fire from the anti-news groups like NNGN (No News is Good News) and SSR (Sam Sheppard Remembered) to be reasonable and help get this much needed legislation enacted. “This has been a long time in coming.” Stated Sam Sheppard. “I don’t think our founding fathers foresaw the impact electronics would make on people when they wrote the First Amendment!”
“These stories that take peoples’ lives by suicide have got to be controlled!” HCI (Headline Control (Headline Control, Inc.) spokesperson, Brara Sady said. “The American people are demanding that Congress do something about all these different type newspapers and magazines available to anyone no matter what their mental state or reading ability is! If there hadn’t been a newspaper, radio, or television, my husband wouldn’t have jumped the roof on Black Friday when the Stock Market crashed! This law won’t infringe on the legitimate newspapers; it’ll get those Saturday Night Specials of the newsstands and their publishers jailed for publishing unreliable stories and sensationalism.”
NRA spokesman Bim Jaker contends, “Newspapers don’t kill people, people kill people!” He also said that what happened to Sam Sheppard couldn’t happen again because “newspapers have set up controls on the way news stories are reported and ‘trail by press’ would be next to impossible.’” Mr. Jaker also said, “publishers of the so-called Saturday Night Specials like Nat’l Inquirer and the Scar were publishing a much-demanded producr for people with limited reading time and/or limited literacy. To ban the Saturday Night Specials would totally deprive an entire segment of our society of being armed with information.”
“News control isn’t what’s needed, he said. “We need greater enforcement of the libel laws on the books now and a greater emphasis on reading ability in our school system. Newspeople are honest, hard-working people doing their best to keep Americans informed to what’s happening in the world.” He also argued, “This bad legislation will lead to total confiscation of all news publishing equipment.”
“At the very best, he stated, “Your news will be history by the time it gets through the Regional Government News Office!” Mr. Jaker encouraged all newspapers and broadcast owners, along with all concerned citizens, to call their congressmen to vote against H.R. -22 and S.R. -22, which Mr. Jaker nicknamed ‘Catch 22’.
Give you a little chuckle? It’s funny only because our First Amendment rights aren’t under attack but the attack on our Second Amendment rights is real and it shouldn’t be funny to gun owners and shouldn’t be funny or encouraged by the Herald! If the media doesn’t change its misdirected stance on our Second Amendment rights, they will be like the Lutheran minister in Germany in Hitler’s Germany that wrote: “First they came after the Jews and I said nothing because I was Lutheran; then they came after the Communists and I said nothing because I wasn’t Communist; next they came for the Catholics and I said nothing because I wasn’t Catholic; then they came after me and there was no one left to say anything.” The ball’s in your court folks; what say ye?
The herald omitted the quotes I referenced from our founding fathers on the subject of firearms but I include them here:
“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military, supplies.”
– George Washington, First Annual Address, to both House of Congress, January 8, 1790
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
-Benjamin Franklin
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”
– James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789
“A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves…and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms… “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
– Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer No. 18, January 25, 1788
Not only did our founding fathers believed the necessity of firearms for the people, they lived it! We can never forget the freedoms afforded by God and affirmed in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution!
