Letter to the editor: Expanding, not restricting, our freedoms

These days it seems like everyone complains that their freedoms are being infringed upon. Wearing masks is a small sacrifice during a pandemic, and actually gives us more freedom — freedom to be healthy.

Letter-writer Steven Crichley (“Totalitarianism frightening — and coming,” April 16) worries about vaccination passports. They would in fact expand his freedom — freedom to go into bars or stadiums without getting sick. He worries about a driving tax. Freedom to drive on safe roads and bridges. Elimination of fossil fuels? Freedom to breathe. Gun control? Freedom to stay alive.

Democrats are not trying to take our freedoms. In fact it is the Republicans who are infringing our right to vote, the centerpiece of our democracy. They know that their domestic policies are very unpopular, and they can’t win a fair election, as shown in seven of the last eight elections, in which they lost the popular vote.

Democrats only want common-sense measures on guns like background checks, which don’t infringe on Second Amendment freedoms. I haven’t heard any call for the confiscation of guns, except military-style weapons which have no place in civilized society. I wonder if people who are ensconced in Fox and other fake news venues were told that there were at least 45 mass shootings between March 16 and April 16? More than one a day.

As letter-writer Don Grasser pointed out (“Our rights are for everyone,” April 10, TribLIVE), gun sales were higher in 2020 than any previous year. And so were mass shootings (611). Coincidence? How can any thinking person think that it would be any other way?

Al Duerig

Salem