I respond to the Monday letter “Why are Americans infatuated with guns?” from Rose M. Joyce, who asked: “Please tell me then why they (guns) are needed? Make a sensible argument.”
The answer is simple: The Founding Fathers gave us the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, to resist an oppressive and tyrannical central government.
Gun ownership empowers the people and weakens the state. Restrictions on gun ownership empowers the state and weakens the people.
Our so-called leaders in Washington continue to ignore and degrade the Constitution to strengthen the central government, which weakens our freedom and liberty. The Constitution is the only thing between us and government tyranny. The primary thrust of that document is that we cannot trust people with too much power; otherwise bad things will happen.
Here’s a question for Joyce: Why is the government infatuated with confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens, in violation of the Second Amendment?
DARRELL L. RATHBURN Columbus