Duane Smith (“Gutting the Second Amendment will leave the citizenry defenseless against tyranny,” April 21) set forth a flawed interpretation of U.S. history to support his pro-gun argument.
As the Declaration of Independence makes abundantly clear, the American colonists turned to violent rebellion only because the British government gave them no meaningful way of lawfully asserting their interests. Those conditions no longer prevail. Except for aberrations, we now settle political disputes in the courts or through the ballot box — not with bullets. What rational person would have it otherwise?
And another thing, under our constitutional system there’s no right to bear arms for rebelling against legally constituted governmental authority. That principle was indisputably established by the Union’s bloody victory in the American Civil War.
Let’s not distort and romanticize our past to advance a deeply problematic appeal to arms. We already get far too much of that from the National Rifle Association and its minions.
Grant C. Price, Spanish Fork
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