In response to “Letter: Weapons are not the Issue” published on Oct. 12.
I understand that last week’s letter to the editor writer, Steve Jones, wants to exercise his Second Amendment right to shoot a bad guy who invades his home. But I want to be sure Jones is aware of what the 1791 Second Amendment actually says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I’ve no doubt Jones is a member of a well-regulated militia, plus a dab hand with a 1791 musket. First, you half-cock the piece and then—with your teeth—you tear open a paper cartridge containing the ball and powder charge. Next, you open the pan of the lock, prime the pan with a small amount of powder and close it. You then pour the rest of the powder down the barrel, place the ball and paper wadding in the muzzle, and ram them home with your ramrod (being careful to seat the ball firmly, but not too tightly, on the powder charge). Finally, you bring the piece to full cock. Voilà! Your musket is now ready to fire. All in less than a minute.
(One caveat: The gun-toting home invader will likely be brandishing a 600 rounds-a-minute Kalashnikov AK-47 that can fire 10 bullets per second, giving him a slight advantage.)
But in spite of this minor qualification, as Jones points out so astutely, “Weapons are lifesavers.” To confirm this, one need only take a look at the phony opposing statistics put out by the World Health Organization and the American Journal of Medicine: “The U.S. accounts for 82 percent of all gun deaths across the developed world, 90 percent of all women shot and 92 percent of young people slaughtered between the ages 15 and 24.”
The same old codswallop we’ve also come to expect from bleeding-heart socialists from across Europe, who have almost no guns at all.
Jones is right on target—thanks to over 300 million guns, we Americans are surely the luckiest and safest people in the world!
David Stansfield