Letter to the editor: Gun ownership and freedom

Rights can be considered to be individualistic or society-wide. The Founding Fathers, understanding that individual rights don’t actually lead to freedoms, wrote the Bill of Rights to provide the American society with certain freedoms.

Take the Second Amendment. When people cite it as justification for our lax gun laws, they mention the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” However, they often fail to include the first part of the statement: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” In the 1700s, the U.S. did not have an Army or Navy. In fact, our founders were wary of a standing army. They felt that it leads to forever wars. Without a standing army, we needed a citizen’s army, a militia, to protect the free state, hence the Second Amendment.

The U.S. now has the largest standing army in the world. We also have a police force, National Guard and Department of Homeland Security with several branches. We, as a society, have the freedom to lead our lives in peace because of the security provided by these forces. Individual gun ownership would not result in any more freedoms beyond the very narrow freedom to own a gun. And the word militia has been coopted by domestic terrorist organizations to conceal their real agenda to ignore or overthrow the government, and to take away freedoms from citizens they do not consider to be “real” Americans.

Michael Garing

North Huntingdon