I’d like to offer an additional point of view to be considered with the July 26 editorial headlined, “AG right to plug weapons ban gap.”
It is important to have rational, factual discussions about rights, risks and any other issue that becomes emotionally charged. I am fully understanding that issues of: abortion, LGBTQ rights, guns, racism, sexism and discrimination can cause individuals to have an immediate visceral reaction.
I am sure even now, as many people read this with my positions on those issues unknown, there are those who are forming arguments in their minds, ready to attack, agree, defend, or shame me. Law is intentionally designed to not choose right and wrong based on emotions. Evidence and argument are what decides guilty or not.
This is why the law is embodied by the symbol of a blindfolded woman holding the scales of justice, not a child on the floor of a supermarket checkout line having a tantrum.
AG Maura Healey’s quote in her Boston Globe commentary, “Not only do we have the legal authority to do so, we have a moral obligation to do so.” is extremely disturbing.
Different people have different views of morality, and what an AG views as moral or immoral is irrelevant. If you like and agree with what the AG is doing, and think it is legal, understand this: Applying the same logic opens the door for the AGs of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee to issue an enforcement notice to provide any clerk, justice of the peace and the public with greater clarification on each state’s marriage laws and the definition of “legal marriage.”
In particular, this notice will provide information on marriages that are prohibited. It will be effective right away.
Wesley Hardy
Easthampton
I understand that whenever the issue of gun violence comes up, Gazette editors feel they must get a viewpoint from someone in the area who is opposed to reasonable controls on the availability of weapons used for mass shootings.
And so now that our attorney general has taken a token but courageous step, we must continue to read what Kirk Whatley has to say on the matter.
The latest piece of wisdom was really too much: “People looking to harm large groups see gun-free zones as ideal targets since there will be no one to challenge them.”
I would challenge Whatley to cite any evidence to support this contention. Have any of the recent mass murders taken place in gun-free zones? I seriously doubt it. What the heck is our police force for anyhow?
Do Whatley and his confreres imagine that a society where everyone walks around with a gun on his (or less likely her) hip would be a better one? Would any of us feel comfortable walking into a movie theater or nightclub or church or school or courtroom knowing that many of the other people there were armed?
Having a weapon doesn’t seem to help any of the black men who have been recently shot and killed by police, even when they tell the officer who has come to the car that they have one.
Nor has it helped the police officers who have been murdered recently. There is one very clear and compelling correlation that can be made though, more guns equals more people getting shot with them.
The solution to the human and American problem of violence is not more tools of violence but rather the tools of non-violence: negotiation, understanding, empathy, tolerance, listening and a striving for justice.
Joe Jewett
Florence
AG Healey justified a unilateral edict regarding Massachusetts gun laws saying she was enforcing existing law and helping stop gun violence by cracking down on “assault weapons.”
Healey provided a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Her justifications are a transparent smokescreen for an ideological power play by an anti-gun AG.
Western Mass Republicans PAC fully supports legislation filed by Sen. Donald Humason to strip Healey of her authority regarding firearm sales in Massachusetts.
No murders were committed in Massachusetts in 2014 with any sort of rifle. Rifles of any kind account for less than 1 percent of murders statewide. Handguns are the weapon of choice for street violence.
Instead, Healey focuses on law-abiding gun owners and weapons that may be intimidating in their appearance. Looking intimidating isn’t illegal. She is also using the power of her office to threaten law-abiding gun dealers.
Healey would have you believe there is a “loophole” in the law. No, this is a pure gun grab by an anti-gun AG. And it appears timed for maximum self-aggrandizement. Thoughtful, informed discussions of gun terminology and the Second Amendment are far too long for this forum. And that’s the point. Healey simply impressed her personal beliefs on the Commonwealth in a seeming attempt to rule by fiat and regulatory power with no discussion.
This is exactly the governance that the people of the Commonwealth do not want. She has dismissed the voters and the entire legislative process in her personal crusade. WMR supports the bi-partisan letter of opposition given AG Healey by 58 state legislators. The Board of Western Mass Republicans calls on the Attorney General to rescind her July 20 Enforcement Notice relative to the state’s assault weapons ban.
Robert Horacek
Southwick
The writer is a board member of the Western Mass Republicans PAC.