Recent letters to The Sun have dealt either directly or indirectly with gun control. A letter arguing that assault-style rifles are not required as home defense weapons was right on target while others implying that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own certain firearms were off the mark by a couple of centuries.
The greatly distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment in recent years by a Republican leadership beholden to the National Rifle Association and a Supreme Court controlled by conservatives has prevented the U. S. ban on these weapons, which expired in 2004, from being renewed.
A major turnover in the Congress and the filling of the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia could conceivably cause this ultra-conservative view of the Second Amendment to be upended — again.
James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson and others were very opposed to constituting a standing army. They believed, at least initially, that the defense of the country should rely solely on state and local militias.
This, in very abbreviated terms, formed the wording of the Second Amendment. That in the 21st century the meaning of those words could be stretched and construed to allow for individual ownership of an AR-15 is ludicrous in the extreme. And that the current struggle in Congress over gun ownership relates only to whether or not to deny people on the terrorist watch list the right to purchase assault weapons is demoralizing and sad.
One recent writer averred that had a bouncer at the Orlando bar brandished an assault rifle, the attacker might have thought twice about targeting that location. If the U. S. ban on individual ownership of assault weapons was still in force, and tightly enforced, most likely the perpetrator would not have had access to the weapons he used and most if not all the folk who were killed would still be alive.
Gun control advocates and the Democratic leadership in the Congress should learn from the purposeful, clever but derogatory renaming of laws by the Republican leadership. One example is "death tax" instead of estate tax. Please start calling these weapons of horror "personal slaughter machines," because that's what they are.
They exist only to further enrich the NRA-backed manufacturers of these weapons. In no way do individuals in this country need to rely on weapons that can slaughter hundreds within minutes to protect their homes or for hunting.
Fred Knauf, Baltimore