Guns, corruption and ownership

I am a junior at Torrington High School. I am speaking personally, and not as a spokesperson for THS. Recently I held an open forum to allow students to express their views on gun violence in an unbiased, respectful setting. There is no way to achieve a perfect unbiased setting, so I decided to have two people host, one Democrat and one Republican.

Being raised in a no-gun household I was curious as to why people are protective of their right to have a gun, I understand that it’s your Second Amendment right, but I felt that there was more to it than that. I found, through being the Democrat Party moderator, that many people claimed to own weapons in order to protect themselves from the government in the event that it becomes corrupt and tries to oppress us. At least, that was the number one reason that came out of the discussion.

However, you don’t have to worry about such a thing happening. You don’t have to worry about the U.S. armed services turning on us, like some suggested during the discussion. An American soldier isn’t going to kill an innocent American citizen because he is commanded to. The armed forces are made up of people whose job is to protect innocent Americans.

You don’t have to worry about corrupt politicians because the government is for the people and by the people. If you feel a politician is corrupt, vote them out!

Just recently New York Democrats felt Joe Crowley was corrupt, so they replaced him with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The bottom line is, I understand that people feel that they need to own a gun in order to protect themselves, among other reasons, but you won’t have to protect yourself from a corrupt government.

Sam Erickson, Torrington