We need gun rights

Dear Editor: Here’s a reminder about why the Second Amendment was written and is still necessary.

In the late 1700s, the Western world was busy ridding itself of the notion that holding power lets you abrogate the inherent rights of others.

This was, of course, a central motivator for the American Revolution: to clarify that wealth or ancestry do not confer power over others. Only a few hundred years earlier, power holders had the right to dispossess or enslave underlings, to prevent citizens from defending themselves against illegitimate force. In England, there were regular cycles of the public being required to bear arms during wartime, followed by required disarmament to keep them from revolting. We’re not done yet discarding this antidemocratic thinking.

We have struggled to replace it with civil society, in which citizens assign power to their representatives in exchange for living in a free, peaceful environment rather than defend against predation by their fellows. We suffer setbacks along the way, as at present, when people forget that in order to receive the benefits of that society, they must subscribe to the social contract that underpins it.

But this highlights a fact of human life: The elimination of all violence is utopian and unrealistic. There will always be those who cannot be trained or convinced to respect the rights of their fellows; there will always exist the need to defend one’s rights against them.

The Second Amendment was written first to protect against illegitimate power sanctioned by social structures, but more broadly secures our right to defend ourselves against illegitimate force directed against us.

Johannes Sayre, Kingston