Chip off the old block...

My older daughter, who is a junior in HS, was given an assignment to write a letter about some important subject to an elected official.  Here was the result:

            My family recently went through an extensive, yearlong process to become licensed firearm owners.  Watching from the outside, I became deeply concerned about  how difficult becoming a  gun-owner in New York State is.  Ayn Rand once said, “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion:  the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.”  Free men do not ask permission to keep and bear arms.            

           I am constantly told that people do not need guns because we have police.  That is like saying we do not need fire extinguishers because we have firemen.  They say the government is limiting rights to protect us but government has no authority to do that; Rights do not come from the government, it exists to protect natural rights and is paid with citizen taxes to do so.  Peoples’ money is going towards enforcement of the restriction of their own rights and yet I see government being praised for increased gun control because it gives the illusion of safety.  Benjamin Franklin once said that, “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” 

            History tells all and it agrees with Franklin.  From the tyrannies of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Poi Pot, Nicolae Ceausescu, Papa Doc Duvalier, Timur, Robespierre, and Ivan the Terrible all taking guns away from civilians to clear, recent examples such as that of Kennesaw, Georgia. In 1982, the town passed a law requiring every household to own a gun.  In the next two years crime rates dropped well over 50%.  Criminals did not want to live there because it was unsafe for them.  Imagine the large-scale results America would see if restrictions were taken off of gun ownership throughout the country. 

              The issue of gun control, as it deals with our country’s foundation and  the safety and liberty of its people, is an essential fight and should be treated with insistence.  I suggest a widespread challenge to the gun control laws via petitions that include its truths and an increase in formal proposals to amend existing restrictions.                                                

                                                    Thank you for your dedicated work on this issue,