{"id":25304,"date":"2018-06-14T12:05:48","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T17:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=25304"},"modified":"2018-06-16T11:30:57","modified_gmt":"2018-06-16T16:30:57","slug":"meet-harry-welty-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=25304","title":{"rendered":"Gun Control vs. the NRA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I first publicly registered my dissatisfaction with Second Amendment purists about thirty years ago with a letter to the editor. The Trib thought it provocative enough that they published it with the photo of a gun barrel pointed at the readers. <\/p>\n<p>It generated some heat from critics and I&#8217;ll confess that looking back on it I regret one term I used. I criticized a &#8220;slavish&#8221; devotion to the Constitution. I had in mind the nit picky sort of cherry picking you might associate with Biblical literalists who like the Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses make a fuss about a single passage like the line in the King James version of the Bible&#8217;s Old Testament that says the name of God is &#8220;Jehovah.&#8221; Never mind that this was a much later English word for a God who the original Hebrew writers tried to discourage their followers from even uttering out-loud. The point of the Constitution was that it could be amended and fitted to the desires of future Americans. <\/p>\n<p>And for two hundred years the Supreme Court did not sever gun onwership from the notion of forming the Second Amendment&#8217;s militia&#8217;s. They were composed originally of a rag tag group of citizens with hunting rifles. It has only been in the years subsequent to my letter that a newly composed Supreme Court decided that militia&#8217;s were not part of the gun ownership right. This was the achievement of the NRA newly transformed from a rifle loving group of hunters to a handgun toting bunch of semi-vigilantes.<\/p>\n<p>I trust the constitution&#8217;s fair application to citizens as far more vital to our protection than I do to some neighbor&#8217;s quick access to a gun. Like cars guns are tools that need regulation. Don&#8217;t run a red light. Keep your rifle in a leather holder. Big deal.<\/p>\n<p>I have no sympathy for an NRA whose president spouts that any attempt to keep guns same is the action of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisdayinquotes.com\/2012\/04\/wayne-lapierre-vs-jack-booted.html\">&#8220;jackbooted thugs.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-gl2qWEP5LTk\/Vw6Y37gBpAI\/AAAAAAAAk_Q\/JnBZe44I6ko\/Wayne%252520LaPierre%252520jack-booted%252520thugs%252520quote%2525201995_thumb%25255B3%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I have a couple collector&#8217;s rifles handed down from Grandfathers that never used them. I&#8217;m not a paranoid like Wayne Lapiere.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve just gotten my questionnaire from them which will be ignored as they will almost certainly endorse Pete Stauber who had a colleague on the Duluth Police force killed by a disturbed man with a gun.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll simply send them <a href=\"http:\/\/mix108.com\/duluth-resident-shows-support-for-victims-of-sandy-hook-school-shooting-in-newtown-connecticut-with-a-guardian-angel-snow-sculpture-in-his-yard-photo-gallery\/\">this picture of me<\/a> in the wake of Sandyhook to let them know how unsuitable I would be a Congressman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first publicly registered my dissatisfaction with Second Amendment purists about thirty years ago with a letter to the editor. The Trib thought it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,47,4,133,127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25304"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25315,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25304\/revisions\/25315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}