LETTER: Rights, guns and driving

In his Dec. 25 letter (“Gun education”), Earle Malkin confuses a privilege with a right. The former is conferred upon a person by the government while the latter is conferred upon a person by natural law, meaning before government without the need or acquiescense of government.

Mr. Malkin mentions being educated to drive a car so he could get the privilege of a driver’s license conferred by the government. Mr. Malkin then mentions being required by the government to become educated in “weaponry” to exercise a person’s natural and constitutional right, outlined in the Second Amendment, to possess a firearm. Mr. Malkin wants to put the government between you and your natural and constitutional right to possess a firearm and to protect yourself and your family.

As history has proven conclusively, once you put the government between you and your natural and constitutional rights, bureaucrats and politicians will regulate away those rights to the point of tyranny, precisely the evil that our Founding Fathers had hoped to avoid. I suggest that Mr. Malkin read Federalist Paper 46 written by the brilliant James Madison on the subject of the Second Amendment and that he study the wise words of Benjamin Franklin: “He who prizes security over liberty deserves neither.”