I’m writing in response to Laurie Sturgeon’s Dec. 1 letter “‘Arms’ bear new meaning today.”
Around 1776 there were flintlock pistols and long rifles — one shot at a time, in the hands of the wrong person, it’s mayhem. Samuel Colt, http://www.history.com/topics/samuel-colt, invented a revolving cylinder pistol in 1836 — in the hands of the wrong person, it’s mayhem and murder. President Lincoln died because of a small pocket, one-shot Derringer; in the hands of John Wilkes Booth it was murder. The long-barreled flintlock (I loved “Davy, Davy Crockett”) rifles became “single bolt” action Mauser 1893 — in the hands of the wrong person, it’s mayhem and murder. How about the 1873 Winchester lever-action rifle (I loved Chuck Connors in “The Rifleman”) — in the hands of the wrong person, it’s mayhem and murder.
It is now 2013 and we have allowed and respected hand guns and magazine-fed rifles because we respect the laws and rule of order. The right to “keep and bear arms” was a single-shot weapon and everything has changed yet we change the Constitution by process not by emotion. The “well-regulated militia” are the 99 percent who respect the laws then and now because we have the Second Amendment. Do we really punish the perpetrators today vs. back then?
Art Liss
Camas
