Second Amendment trumps freedom

Re Shooter targets Republicans at ballpark,

June 15 Wednesday was a very bad day for the NRA. The carnage at a Virginia baseball practice, where the targets were not chosen for being gay, female, Sikh or Muslim, but rather for being Republican members of Congress, must concentrate the minds of lawmakers everywhere.

That the Republicans had to cancel a meeting that day to propose making it easier to buy gun silencers rings with terrible irony, given that Senator Mo Brooks claims the noise made by the assailant’s gun helped him escape.

On the same day as the Virginia tragedy, a disgruntled worker returned to his UPS workplace in San Francisco and murdered and wounded his co-workers.

Clearly, the rights of Americans to live and pursue happiness are being trumped by the right of just about any person to own just about any kind of firearm, all in the name of the second half of a very poorly worded Second Amendment. When freedom is linked to this version of gun freedom, the very concept becomes trivialized.

Don’t Americans know that people in Canada and Europe live free without having to own guns, and without having to hate their own governments? Dr. Ron Charach, Toronto One wonders now if at least some in the U.S. Republican Party will begin to question their stance on gun control. If not, what will it take to disengage themselves from the big-money support of the gun lobby? The murder of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook didn’t do it. Will this episode begin to change some minds?

What seems to have been lost is the fact this was not a Muslim terrorist, but a disgruntled American taking hateful action against those he disagreed with.

Of the 196 mass shootings in the United States this year alone, few if any were committed by Muslims, but all were committed by guns whose increasing firepower is bringing terror to public events and places.

Now that it has been brought into the very backyard of the Republican Party, are we going to see some action? Stephen Bloom, Toronto