Having a gun and using a gun

Mark McFall (“Vestal ignores good citizens,” Dec. 19) ignores the fact that everyone is good until they are not. Gun owners are law-abiding until they threaten or shoot someone. McFall’s simple thinking confuses having a gun with using a gun.

Nearly every liberal-minded person I know has guns; they hunt, collect and target shoot. Now they need to consider self-defense, not from criminals but from political nutcases who believe like McFall that the government is the enemy. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a Second Amendment that armed mobs with guns to oppose their government. Twenty-one years before the Civil War Lincoln said: “If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

I think of Lincoln’s words when I see an armed Trump Taliban pick-up with flags and bumper stickers on our streets. The First and Second Amendments protect them until they start shooting or running over people. I don’t want your gun, but you will eat it if you point it at me. There is a difference between a gun owner with political ideals and an insurrectionist traitor with a gun. The Constitution can be amended but has no provisions for overthrowing the government with guns.

American democracy is like a house made from straw, and citizens like McFall want to play with matches.

Pete Scobby

Newport