Letter to the Editor

Stateline news again. Some woman from East Troy likes universal background checks and believes that 90% of Americans support her view.

So:

People just can't seem to understand that firearms are not subject to regulation in the United States. The Second Amendment is quite clear:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

A "well regulated Militia" is all able-bodied Americans trained in the use of weapons. It has nothing to do with the National Guard.

"The security of a free State" means protecting the inherent rights of the people of the United States from tyranny, foreign or domestic.

"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is pretty self-explanatory. "Infringed" means putting any obstacle at all between a law-abiding American and access to weapons common to the infantryman of the day.

Our country has a long history of infringing on American's right to keep and bear arms, starting with the 1934 National Firearms Act, which would have been found un-Constitutional in the Supreme Court but for the fact that a government lawyer only told part of the truth when testifying about a "prohibited" weapon.

"Universal background checks" will be worse than useless without universal registration - and history teaches us that gun registration inevitably results in confiscation and all too often in genocide.

By the way - that "90%" is from a dubious poll likely conducted by one of the many gun-hating groups out there. I know of no one who supports more gun control.

Chuck Kuecker