Letter to the Editor: History
BY Bob Pendergrass, Broken Arrow
Sunday, April 15, 2012
4/15/12 at 3:43 AM
Wake up, gun toters and gunslinger wannabes. The hype, hyperbole and hysteria surrounding guns needs to stop. The only right granted by the Second Amendment is the right to own a gun, though this was not definitively stated until a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
It does not grant a right even to carry the gun outside your home; nor to take it anywhere you want; nor to do with it anything you want, etc. These are all privileges only, granted by government. As such, guns can be taken away at anytime without doing any damage to, or be any threat to, the Second Amendment right of ownership.
This distinction between rights and privileges goes all the way back to British common law (rights are natural law or God-given and privileges are government-given).
The gun-slinging West is history and should remain there.
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Associated Images:
Firearms are handled by a dealer at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show in 2011. The show is billed as the world’s
largest gun show. MIKE SIMONS/Tulsa World file
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