In the military, I was trained and certified to safely and effectively operate weapons of war, including handguns, machine guns and 3,000-rounds-per-minute powered Gatling guns for use in combat.
But I certainly was not allowed to take them home or employ them recreationally, or even access them unless authorized and issued by armory specialists under command directives.
The compelling experience related by Lynn S. Higgins in his Aug. 23 letter to the Public Forum, “Handling weapons of war,” relating to the strict training for and control of combat weapons in the Army deserves wide attention and respect, as does his distinguished and decorated service. (I was fortunate to have been a National Guard associate of his.)
Why is it, he wrote, “the civilian world is so myopic they can’t learn from the disciplined professionals and see a big problem with allowing unsupervised assault-type weapons in the hands of any … who just wants to own one because.”
Well, only in America, that is.
What else comes to mind when Mr. Higgins reminds us of the common sense — no, the wisdom, really — of tightly controlling training for and access to such weapons, designed for war-fighting by responsible service members?
Perhaps the term “well regulated” would do. As in “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,” as it says in the Second Amendment, but surely to the security of us all, of society in general.
Well regulated as to what kinds of arms, sizes of magazines, types of ammo one may, as a private citizen not in the military, possess. Well regulated by training and licensing laws akin to driving privilege requirements.
A well regulated militia, as the Second Amendment predicates, defeats the notion, a malignancy sadly nurtured by Justice Antonin Scalia (DC v. Heller, 2007), that really, any idiot can own and deploy an assault weapon.
David R. Whittaker, Riverton
