Dear Editor:
I am a 62 year old life long resident of Hudson County and I am a proud gun owner. Ever since I can remember I have been a proud gun owner. When I was a child I owned a child’s toy guns, proudly. Throughout my life I have owned all types of firearms; different types of firearms needed for different applications in the same way a golfer needs different clubs or a baseball player needs different bats, – (which BTW, according to Justice Department statistics, are used to kill many more people annually than guns). The big difference between these inanimate objects is of course the ownership of my firearms is covered, (or at least under constitutionally cognizant courts, legislators and Executives should be covered), under our Bill of Rights. There is no Bill of Needs.
As a proud member of the constitutionally correct American gun owning community let me say: though as heart broken and sickened over Newtown as any member of the human family could be, my status as a gun owner had nothing, nothing, nada, zilch, zero to do with what I am now being ostracized over and blamed for by some self serving and inept legislators, (state and federal), and like acting governors like Andrew Cuomo, (though Cuomo’s lunatic rant on his gun bill will be hard to duplicate). Members of the media, (owners and talking heads), who see the particular horror and evil of Newtown as their latest (perhaps last) best hope to circumvent the written word of the law, (i.e. Article II, Bill of Rights), have also joined in the chorus with distortions and outright lies tailored to play to the non gun astute in order to serve their own personal hatred of guns and love of the concept of an omnipotent government Oz.
Recently a fifteen year old girl who participated in President Obama’s second inauguration was inadvertently shot and killed in vehemently anti gun Mayor Rahm “never let a good crisis go to waste” Emanuel’s Chicago as her criminal killer ran shooting from an alley. Last year the best that mayor had to offer a kid like her was to ask nicely of Chicago’s criminal element to please “take your stuff away to the alley.” Also ‘sickening.’
Lawrence J. Braico