Oppose Gun Ban/Restriction Legislation

[4N2NR]

As you are aware there are numerous pieces of legislation being introduced that, if passed, will affect your ability to even choose whether or not you wish to own specific firearms (pistol, rifle or shotgun) and dictate magazine capacity. Please take two minutes to contact your elected officials (<-- click it!) and feel free to even use the letter below (personalize it if you wish) to speed up the process. For the greatest effect enter your zip code and click on both Write to All Your State Reps at Once and Write to All Your Federal Reps at Once (but, please, click and send them something asking they defeat the proposed legislation):

I strongly urge you to oppose any firearm legislation that would infringe on my right to keep and bear arms. It is not about how many do I want, or how many do I need, or even whether or not it is a semiautomatic with a high capacity magazine. It shouldn’t matter if I have firearms for self defense, hunting, competitive sports shooting or collecting. It’s about protecting my right to make that decision and the right of the people to keep and bear arms that shall not be infringed. The constitution starts with “We the People,” not we the government. The government belongs to us, we do not belong to the government. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right. The government is our servant. We do not serve government. We are Americans. We are not all wards or property of the state, despite Barack Obama’s best efforts.

Yes, there have been horrific crimes committed with the use of firearms. Laws that are already on the books were violated through senseless criminal acts. We have heard a great outcry from people who choose not to exercise their right to bear arms. They do not adequately recognize that simply having access to a firearm does not cause murderous intent or criminal nature. Significantly absent from all this are the voices of the many Americans who protect themselves and their families, who prevent crime every day with a firearm. Whether it is the convenience store clerk from Battle Creek, Michigan, who protected himself and his customers from a robbery because he was armed with a gun, or a veteran in Athens, Georgia who uses a wheelchair that thwarted an intruder by pointing his legally owned gun at the burglar, or a single mom guarding her baby during a home invasion -- guns are used every day to make this country safer. I pray that this administration treads carefully on this issue, as I fear crime rates might go up with more gun control. Instead, we should be looking into why someone would want to commit these acts. The same as lots of drunk drivers in one area should not result in taking cars off streets, but rather train ourselves to detect patterns and stop those before they hurt others, so should be the case with firearms.

We did not invent the right to keep and bear arms when we drafted the Second Amendment; the right was pre-existing as both common law and natural law. I implore you to stand with the many Americans who oppose any further gun control. The first ten amendments of the US Constitution were not an after thought to make the Constitution better, but became a line in the sand in the eyes of those who feared that government did not have sufficient limits placed on it in the newly developed Constitution. The events that led to their inclusion were driven by Virginia delegate George Mason. Simply put, without the ratification of the Bill of Rights, there would be no ratification of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson argued that "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

As my elected representative who has sworn an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States, uphold the spirit of the Second Amendment and defeat any legislation that would infringe on our liberties - especially in respect to any legislation aimed at creating a ban or limitations to firearm ownership.


Sincerely,