The Outdated Second Amendment

Paul L. Whiteley Sr., in a letter to the New York Times:

America's gun addiction and an outdated Second Amendment are moving us more and more each day toward "culture of death" dominance....

The unbridled power of the National Rifle Association to lobby goes unchecked...

Such odd ideas. In-school child murders are at a 40 year low, even tho gun ownership has risen dramatically. (There are more multiple victim in-school killing nowadays, but the overall numbers are way down. We hear about all the killings now, so we are more aware than in the 1950s.) Murders in general, at record lows since the 1960s.

Most murders are directly related to banned recreational substances, as they were during alcohol Prohibition, but those murders are blamed on inanimate objects rather than on our state and national policies of Prohibition.

And contempt for citizens lobbying their representatives. Would Mr. Whitely write so contemptuously of Green Peace or National Audubon Society or National Organization for Women for lobbying their legislators? Would he "bridle" those citizens' right to lobby?

As for the 2nd being outmoded, when and where in America have we seen pogroms? Genocide? Precisely among those ppl who were denied their right to own weapons. Blacks: lynched where white people's laws prevented them from owning guns. Disarmed union organizers: Murdered. Civil rights workers: murdered. No, the 2nd Amendment is still at work. Imperfectly, but better than being a Kurd in Saddam's Iraq.