The two letters show opposite assumptions about reality and the role of governments. The NY letter assumes guns are bad, and ordinary citizens should not have guns, because ordinary citizens do bad things with guns. The letter from the 28 states assumes government is subordinate to the people, government must defend the nation, and an armed population aids the government in defending the nation against all enemies. These two assumptions about reality are in direct conflict. [More]
We are, in fact, two countries divided by the fundamental difference of principle on the question: Does the government serve the people, or do the people serve the government?
“… because ordinary citizens do bad things with guns. ”
No, they really don’t.
There are somewhere north of 150 million “ordinary citizens” in this country that own guns, lots of guns, something like 400 million guns. And they own some where in the billions (yep, with a B) of rounds of ammo.
If “ordinary citizens” were really doing bad things with all of that hardware there would be no one left to bury the bodies much less any stupid state level politicians in any shape to write letters like that one..