Dear Editor:

As expected the media, the politicians, the simple-minded Hollywood celebrities, and countless others have all jumped on the anti-gun bandwagon in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown, Conn.

When a school shooting happens, they no doubt see another golden opportunity to demand that the American people part company with their Second Amendment liberties! Suppose those school children had been on a bus going on a class field trip and the bus was involved in a horrific highway accident, would the media, President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, Senators Lautenberg, Feinstein and Schumer all be carrying on as they have been for the past week? I think not! Those innocent children would still be dead and their families grieving, but to the anti-gun crowd their deaths wouldn't be that tragic since it was a highway accident and no guns were involved!

Their maudlin concern over dead children is enough to make one ill. Our government enforced United Nations sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and thousands of Iraqi children died. During World War II, the U.S. and its allies incinerated thousands of German, Japanese, and Italian children during air raids on non-military targets. Nobody seems to be upset over that then, or now. Or how about Waco in 1993 when the Federal BATF and FBI killed kids who were in the Branch Davidian compound along with their parents? Oh well, they were just weird religious nut-jobs anyway! Care to go back further? How about December 1890 when the U.S. Seventh Calvary shot down members of the Sioux tribe of the Lakota Nation at Wounded Knee, S.D.? Most of the dead were women, children, and old men.

There is a pattern here, namely that governments (most assuredly including our own) have lots of blood on their hands. Tragic as these school shootings are, they pale in comparison to the body counts racked up by governments throughout history. Guns do not cause crime or murder anymore than knives, forks, spoons, and plates cause obesity! Inanimate objects such as guns have no ability to act on their own, so who then should determine who can have guns and who can't?

Given the huge amount of people who have been killed by governments through the ages, it's a pretty safe bet to say that the military and the police shouldn't be the only ones to have firearms. The anti-gun zealots bemoan the fact that there are well over 300 million guns in private hands in America. I, for one, rejoice in that fact.

We Libertarians have long known that if the Second Amendment can be taken away or weakened, all of the other parts of the Bill of Rights can be as well. Don't let the media and government liars use a tragedy to make you part with your freedom!

Mark Richards,
West Milford