This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Dennis Braby's "Gun Band-Aid" (Forum, Jan. 22) is yet another instance of selective appeal to the Constitution, intentionally simplistic and misdirecting.
By omitting the equally important part of the Second Amendment —"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" — Braby plays the role of a horse with blinders, seeing only what his trainers, the gun lobbyists, want him to see. Please, folks, don't write any more letters quoting only the latter part of the Second Amendment, especially if you follow it with "Period!"
We need better thinking than the paranoia Braby regurgitates with the statement, "there is no going back and no end where it will stop."
I often hear gun extremists cite their Declaration of Independence right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I see it another way.
As our population grows and our space shrinks, the unfettered proliferation of guns of all types can and will collide headlong against these inalienable rights with respect to innocents killed by guns, innocents harmed by guns and innocents threatened by guns.
Don Wilhelmsen
Draper