In the light of this week’s mass murder in open-carry Las Vegas, I want to commend letter writer Chris Langlois (“Protests seek liberty, justice,” Sept. 29) for quoting the third verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, which calls out the slaves who guided the British past the local slave patrol militias and allowed the British to burn the capital.
The militias in the Second Amendment were actually slave patrols who, contrary to NRA mythology, were famous for deserting during the Revolutionary War and were more like cowardly rifle clubs who chased after escaped slaves and were worthless for defending the capital during the War of 1812.